Sean Wilentz: July 4th's Forgotten Partisan History
[Sean Wilentz is a history professor at Princeton University whose books include The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln and The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008. A contributing editor at The New Republic, his new book, Bob Dylan in America, will be published in September by Doubleday.]
Even at a time of bitter political partisanship and ideological division, celebrating the Fourth of July remains a surpassing national ritual of patriotic unity. The hot dogs and picnics and fireworks are the show; beneath them stirs a common veneration for the Declaration of Independence and especially its opening passages about the self-evident truths of equality and humankind’s inalienable rights. Americans spend the rest of the year either taking those words for granted or fighting intensely—and, these days, bitterly—over what the words mean in our own political time. But for one blessed solitary day, we give the arguments a rest in order to express gratitude, delight, and even wonder at what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues wrought in 1776. And many people lament a fancied bygone time when this basic unity pervaded American political life all year long, despite our many differences.
The nostalgia misreads not just American political history, which has generally been a chronicle of sharp conflicts, but the history of the Fourth of July as well. Independence Day now may bring a break from passionate argument. During the decades after the nation’s founding, though, the occasion prompted furious partisan declamations and fractious rhetoric.
The very first celebrations occurred on July 8, 1776, when bells rang and bonfires crackled throughout Philadelphia following the first public reading of the Declaration. A year later, the city settled on July 4th for its festivities, and that has been the date ever since. Yet for all of their enthusiasm for independence, Americans said little during the Revolution about the Declaration’s egalitarian political principles. It was enough simply to commemorate the Continental Congress’s decision to sever the colonies from Great Britain.
Independence Day became a much bigger deal—and a festival of polemic—during the 1790s. Led by Jefferson and James Madison, opposition to the policies of President Washington and his successor, John Adams, created the first rough approximations of American political parties. At the heart of the conflict were fundamentally different visions of what the American republic ought to become, and the frenzy was the worst in American history except for the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction. By decade’s end, pro-Administration Federalists enacted a Sedition Law to help suppress what they deemed the dangerous radicalism of Jefferson’s and Madison’s Republicans....
Read entire article at The Daily Beast
Even at a time of bitter political partisanship and ideological division, celebrating the Fourth of July remains a surpassing national ritual of patriotic unity. The hot dogs and picnics and fireworks are the show; beneath them stirs a common veneration for the Declaration of Independence and especially its opening passages about the self-evident truths of equality and humankind’s inalienable rights. Americans spend the rest of the year either taking those words for granted or fighting intensely—and, these days, bitterly—over what the words mean in our own political time. But for one blessed solitary day, we give the arguments a rest in order to express gratitude, delight, and even wonder at what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues wrought in 1776. And many people lament a fancied bygone time when this basic unity pervaded American political life all year long, despite our many differences.
The nostalgia misreads not just American political history, which has generally been a chronicle of sharp conflicts, but the history of the Fourth of July as well. Independence Day now may bring a break from passionate argument. During the decades after the nation’s founding, though, the occasion prompted furious partisan declamations and fractious rhetoric.
The very first celebrations occurred on July 8, 1776, when bells rang and bonfires crackled throughout Philadelphia following the first public reading of the Declaration. A year later, the city settled on July 4th for its festivities, and that has been the date ever since. Yet for all of their enthusiasm for independence, Americans said little during the Revolution about the Declaration’s egalitarian political principles. It was enough simply to commemorate the Continental Congress’s decision to sever the colonies from Great Britain.
Independence Day became a much bigger deal—and a festival of polemic—during the 1790s. Led by Jefferson and James Madison, opposition to the policies of President Washington and his successor, John Adams, created the first rough approximations of American political parties. At the heart of the conflict were fundamentally different visions of what the American republic ought to become, and the frenzy was the worst in American history except for the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction. By decade’s end, pro-Administration Federalists enacted a Sedition Law to help suppress what they deemed the dangerous radicalism of Jefferson’s and Madison’s Republicans....