On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence. The festivities began within a few days: parades and public readings, fires and candles and the firing of 13 bullets, one for each of the original states.
It took almost a century before the country officially declared it its founding holiday.
With the recent adoption of June 19, or Juneteenth commemorating the end of slavery in the United States as a federal holiday, the country now has 12 such holidays. Many of them have long been fixed on the American calendar, but their presence is not just a story of continuity. They reflect how the United States has evolved – from a union of states with a relatively small federal government to a more centralized country.
Gatherings across the country for Independence Day and other holidays are as old as the country itself. But the first round of federal vacation, identified as such because federal employees (initially only federal employees in Washington, DC) were given a day off, was enacted into law only in 1870, by President Ulysses S. Grant, five years after the end of the Civil War.
“The Civil War consolidated national power in all sorts of ways, and national holidays are an illustration of that,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Eric Foner.
Juneteenth and other federal holidays have been approved by a significant majority in Congress, suggesting a broad bipartisan consensus. The first holidays, notes Grant’s biographer Ron Chernow, were the ones that did not spark debate – New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and George Washington’s birthday (adopted 1879).
“They were declared after the Civil War, but not coincidentally they had nothing to do with the Civil War. “The wounds of war were still deep, and any remembrance of the war itself would be seen as divisive,” said Mr Chernow. He notes that Day of the Fallen, honoring those who died in the war, became a federal holiday until 1888.
“The first five federal holidays tried to find a common denominator between North and South,” says researcher Chernow.
“Both sides of the Civil War claimed to have fought in the spirit of the American Revolution. “So it was easy for both sides to celebrate Washington’s birthday and Independence Day.”
Whether declarations of patriotism or social justice, federal holidays reflect part of the country’s sense of self and how it changes.
Public support to make Rev.’s birthday. Martin Luther King’s celebration was so strong that it was signed into law in 1983 by President Ronald Reagan, who had challenged the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s and privately believed that the reputation of the civil rights leader it was “based on image, not reality”. Even then, Arizona, New Hampshire and South Carolina resisted making it a state holiday, and South Carolina waited until 2000 to do so. Alabama and Mississippi still celebrate King’s birthday along with the birthday of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
Columbus Day became a national holiday in 1968, approved by Congress and President Lyndon Johnson as a tribute to immigrants and as an “expression of readiness to face the unknown future with confidence,” according to a Senate report at the time. . But over the past 40 years, as the image of Columbus has shifted from that of the “discoverer of America” to that of a racist and imperialist, cities and states have either changed the name of the holiday (Hawaii calls it “Day of Discovery”) or have used that day to honor others; since 1989, South Dakoka has called it “Native American Day.”
“You can look at federal holidays as parks erected in parks,” says Matthew Dennis, author of Days of Red, White, and Blue Paper, a 2002 book on American holidays. “With a monument, you try to perpetuate the meaning of the past in stone. But that can change, and people can say, ‘Wait, who is this man?’ “
Among the national holidays, July 4 is the most complex and debated, a reflection of questions and contradictions about the country’s origins and the Declaration of Independence itself.
Independence Day has been involved in the divisions of the country almost from the beginning. In the 1780s and 1790s, supporters of a stronger central government (Federalists) and those worried about the possibility of a return to the British-style monarchy (sometimes called the Jefferson Republicans) debated the authorship of the Declaration of Independence. Republicans said the merit should have been recognized only to Thomas Jefferson, while Federalists opposed it, arguing correctly that many others had worked for him.
In the decades before the Civil War, African-Americans were often excluded from the official events of July 4 and celebrated on July 5, while recognizing July 4 and their distance from that day. Frederick Douglass delivered his famous 1852 speech, “What is July 4 for the slave,” on July 5.
The Civil War itself was a period that has sparked conflicting interpretations. Southerners embraced the message of the Declaration of Independence of the challenge against tyranny. North looked at it as a sketch. In a letter to Congress on July 4, 1861, just months after the start of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln spoke of Independence Day as the inspiration for a new and more humane society.
“Our opponents have adopted several declarations of independence in which, unlike the one written by Jefferson, they remove the words ‘all people are created equal,'” wrote Lincoln, adding that the Union was supporting “that the government is the object of which is to elevate the position of man; remove artificial burdens from everyone’s shoulders; open the way to success for all; give everyone an unlimited start and a fair chance at the race of life. “
The meaning of July 4 has continued to evolve, from president to president. Franklin D. Roosevelt and George W. Bush are among those who dedicated Independence Day speeches to the military, either during World War II or after the 9/11 attacks. John F. Kennedy’s 1962 speech in the midst of the Cold War called independence “the only issue that divides the world today” and spoke of “the desire for independence behind the Iron Curtain.” In 2014, President Barack Obama cited the promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as one reason why “immigrants from all over the world dream of coming to our shores.”
For Independence Day 2020, less than two months after the assassination of African-American George Floyd, President Donald Trump denounced Black Lives Matters protesters and what he called “a relentless campaign to erase our history, for to humiliate our heroes, to destroy our values and indoctrinate our children ”. His successor, incumbent President Joe Biden, released a short video saying the country had not yet fulfilled its promise of equality, noting that Jefferson was also a slave owner.
“But once it was proposed, it (equality) was an idea that could not be limited,” he said. “She survived the Civil War, the Bull Connor dogs, the assassination of Martin Luther King and more than 200 years of systematic racism.”
“America is not a fairy tale,” Biden added. “It has been a constant battle between two parts of our character: the idea that all men and women – all men – are created equal and the racism that has divided us.”
