Difference between revisions of "Fourth of July"

Latest revision as of 14:28, September 19, 2017

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United States Independence Day

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-[[File:Dcfireworks.jpg|right|200px| The Spirit of '76]]
+#REDIRECT [[United States Independence Day]]
-The '''Fourth of July''' is the most important national holiday. It is the celebration of the birthday of the [[United States of America]], for on July 4th, 1776, the [[Continental Congress]] formally adopted the [[Declaration of Independence]] and the new nation was born.<ref>The Congress had already voted for independence on July 2, 1776.</ref> The very first celebration was held in the nation's capital, then [[Philadelphia]]. Congress established Independence Day as a holiday in 1870, <ref>[http://www.pbs.org/capitolfourth/history.html History of the Fourth] PBS.org</ref> and as a legal holiday in 1941. '''This is year number {{age|1776|7|4}} of our Independence.'''
-Most American businesses are closed and the citizens enjoy the summer holiday with cookouts, get-togethers, concerts, baseball, picnics, barbecues, bon fires, parades, and at night time enjoy displays of [[fireworks]]. Some people hold re-enactments of [[Revolutionary War]] era and some people give political speeches at events across the nations cities and towns.
-The [[American flag|Flag]] and symbols of it are in evidence everywhere, in this annual outpouring of [[patriotism]]. An expression of pride and hope can be found in many patriotic songs such as the national anthem The Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, God Bless America, My Country 'Tis of Thee and The Stars and Stripes Forever. <ref>[http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/patriotic/patriotic-home.html Patriotic Melodies] The Library of Congress</ref>
-==Historic patterns==
-The first celebrations of the Fourth of July began in 1777, but it was not a major holiday until politics intruded.  By 1800, embittered partisanship in the [[First Party System]] made the celebrations Federalist occasions in Federalist Party strongholds like Boston. The Jeffersonian Republicans, believing the Federalists had misappropriated and misinterpreted the American Revolution and neglected the role of [[Thomas Jefferson]], staged their own, more democratic, celebrations. Disorder sometimes marred the festivities, but the public enjoyed both parties' observances. The War of 1812 saw the substitution of solemn observances for the noisy partisan celebrations.
-By the [[Era of Good Feelings]] after the War of 1812, the holiday became nonpartisan and was enthusiastically celebrated across the land. It encouraged national identity and unity with orations, dinners, militia musters, parades, and fireworks.
-The Fourth took on a military dimension that stressed masculinity. Festivities were opened to the entire public and exemplified [[Republicanism|republican]] and egalitarian principles, but they increasingly depicted a militarized, masculine ideal of citizenship and accorded women few roles other than as spectators.
-Especially in small cities and towns the holiday combined patriotism and entertainment in an attempt to reaffirm common values and reinforce community solidarity. The festivities' main ingredients, often covering several days before 1940, were civic and patriotic oratory, parades, sports and games, carnivals, dances, fireworks, music, and food.
-The Fourth celebrates prowess—first national strength and in recent decades individual strength. The Peachtree Road Race was begun in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1970 and is held each year on the Fourth of July. The first ten-kilometer race attracted a mere 110 runners; by 1994, the number of participants had grown to some fifty thousand.
-During the 1960s and 1970s, some cities with large antiwar elements, such as Denver, saw parades and picnics replaced by demonstrations and rioting ridiculing patriotism and denouncing the Vietnam War. Those protests were gone by 1975.
-The Fourth is an affirmation of Americanism for Americans in remote locations (such as the Overland Trail in the 1850s) and for Americans overseas. They hold special celebrations at embassies and consulates, as well as private parties wherever expatriates gather.
-===Oratory===
-Typical celebration in the west during the early 1820s paid tribute to the pioneers, observed the customs and traditions of their old homes, alluded to current problems, and sought to reconcile political interests for the occasion. Lawyers were called on to read the Declaration of Independence and to discuss its current and future meaning. Special tribute was paid to Washington and the Founding Fathers, as well as to the personification of the "Genius of Liberty" which would advance both the spiritual and material basis of the United States and counteract the influence of Europe's despotic monarchism. The moral and religious tone of the celebration was accompanied by a general interest in eating, drinking, and offering toasts. The general acceptance of verbose, exaggerated, and ungrammatical Fourth of July oratory was not the result of ignorance. It was based on the idea that people were in danger of losing their liberty, when they forgot to commemorate the manner in which it was won.
-As the fireworks grow louder and brighter, the oratory grows softer and dimmer, and often is dispensed with.
-===Antebellum Southern whites===
-From 1778 to 1821 orations in the South reflected the nationalist feeling of the period, but in the next decade the threat to the expansion of slavery created an undertone of suspicion. In 1831 and 1832 nullification dominated the celebration, and the abolitionist threat and the horror of slave revolt appeared next. In the 1840s and 1850s the orators defended the institution of slavery. In the five years before the outbreak of the Civil War orators in Charleston and other deep South cities began to accept secession as inevitable. From 1847 to 1860 the orators spoke increasingly with one voice against the hostile action of the federal government. In the border states the emphasis was more on preserving the Union at all costs.
-===Blacks===
-Before the Civil War free blacks found fault with the Declaration of Independence for inconsistency and the closely related grounds of hypocrisy and ineffectuality. They held negative attitudes toward Thomas Jefferson and dismissed the Fourth of July because it did not include freedom for blacks. Black leaders and white abolitionists fought to insure that the Declaration would remain an inescapable commitment.<ref> Benjamin Quarles, "Antebellum Free Blacks and the 'Spirit Of '76.'" ''Journal of Negro History'' 1976 61(3): 229-242. </ref>
-The Fourth is a celebration of freedom. African American celebration of the Fourth of July in southern cities such as Memphis, Tennessee, in the years following the Civil War featured a major parade with all the local black organizations marching or making floats, followed by picnics and a reading of the Declaration of Independence. At the same time, Fourth of July celebrations by the white community in Memphis tended to be much more subdued.
-==Patriot letters==
-[[John Adams]] wrote to his wife Abigail on July 3rd, it reads <ref>[http://www.101kidz.com/holidays/4thjuly/history.html July 4th History] Kidz101.com</ref>
-{{cquote| The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of [[America]]. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward for evermore.}}
-In a letter written on June 24, 1826, [[Thomas Jefferson]] says,
-{{cquote|May it be to the world, what I believe it will be ... the signal of arousing men to burst the chains ... and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form, which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. ... For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.}}
-In a quote from [[John F. Kennedy]],
-{{cquote|We dare not forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution.}}
-[[File:Spirit of 76.jpg|right|200px| The Spirit of '76]]
-==See Also==
-* [[Declaration of Independence]]
-* [[Founding Fathers]]
-* [[American Revolution]]
-==Further reading==
-* Martin, Howard H. "The Fourth of July oration," ''Quarterly Journal of Speech,'' Volume 44, Issue 4, 1958, Pages 393–401
-* Quarles, Benjamin. "Antebellum Free Blacks and the 'Spirit of '76'" ''Journal of Negro History'', Vol. 61, No. 3 (Jul., 1976), pp. 229-242 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2717251 in JSTOR]
-* Sweet, Leonard I. "The Fourth of July and Black Americans in the Nineteenth Century: Northern Leadership Opinion Within the Context of the Black Experience," ''Journal of Negro History,'' Vol. 61, No. 3 (Jul., 1976), pp. 256-275  [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2717253 in JSTOR]
-* Travers, Len. ''Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic.'' (1997). 304 pp.
-* Warren, Charles. "Fourth of July Myths," ''William and Mary Quarterly,'' Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jul., 1945), pp. 238-272 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/1921451 in JSTOR], by leading conservative scholar
-==References==
-<references/>
-[[category:United States History]]
-[[category:American Revolution]]
-[[Category:United States Holidays]]

Difference between revisions of "Fourth of July"

Latest revision as of 14:28, September 19, 2017

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