The Fourth of July: US History and the Dream of America

Author: Paul Thomson
Date: Jun 19, 2009 - 3:11:51 AM

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With the Fourth of July on its way, Americans are beginning to stockpile their reserves of hot dogs, hamburgers, cole-slaw, sodas, and other heart-healthy snacks. This is the time when the whole family – often including weird relatives you never even knew you had – gathers around the barbecue or the picnic bench, or the tree your cat got stuck in when the neighbor set off a bottle rocket.  This is the time to watch your kid sister in the downtown parade, or to go play baseball with you pals, or to hang an American flag off the side of your house.  More than anything else, this is the time when Americans come together to put on a nationwide display of brilliantly-colored explosives – just as the founding fathers intended.

With all the festivity surrounding the Fourth of July, it can be easy to forget the history behind America’s most beloved holiday. Did you know, for example, that John Adams believed July second would forever be celebrated as American Independence Day? After all, that was the day that the Continental Congress declared independence from Britain in 1776. In fact, although the Declaration of Independence was officially approved by the Continental Congress on July fourth, it was only a rough draft covered with edit marks and signed by a handful of members; the remaining delegates waited a whole month for a tidier, more durable copy to be made before they finished signing the document. Even some of the loftiest and most inspiring passages of the Declaration of Independence, which are typically attributed to Thomas Jefferson’s mad rhetorical skills, were paraphrased from the Declaration of Rights that George Mason wrote for the Virginia General Assembly only months earlier.

Yes, the Fourth of July is a perfect time to brush up on your US history. Okay, so maybe not the fourth itself, but how about in the next day or two, when you’ve awoken from your food coma and your sunburn is coming along nicely. You can read about how the American flag painted in “Washington Crossing the Delaware” didn’t even exist until a year and a half after the crossing, or how the so-called Boston Massacre actually consisted of five Bostonians who were shot for chucking snowballs at British troops, or how Paul Revere never shouted, “The British are coming!” but rather the far less catchy, “The Regulars are coming out!” These are some of the formative moments of the American Revolution that helped make America, the collective dream of a people, into a reality.

In that vein, the Fourth of July is also an appropriate time to reflect on the ongoing struggle that is our story. The American dream has come a long way since the formation of the United States, whose very definition was threatened less than a century into its existence by the Civil War. Or again in the time of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, when easy money and overindulgence resulted in the not-so-great Great Depression. And let’s not forget that the American dream still remains a “dream deferred” for many minority segments of the population. So while we are entitled to celebrate our successes on this great day, we must also take a moment to acknowledge the distance yet to be traveled.

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