When Did July 4 Become the Fourth of July?

Date Published
Image
fife and drum Yorktown reenactment
Article Body

July 4 wasn't always, well, the Fourth of July—at least as we think of it today in America. In fact, July 4 wasn't even the day of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—even though Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin insisted it was.

Nobody actually proved them wrong until 1884 when a librarian of the Boston Public Library consulted original manuscript minutes of the journals of Congress preserved in the Department of State. In the intervening century, July 4th celebrations became an established feature of public life and served, in part, to interpret and define local and national (and partisan) political culture.

Download podcasts talking about the history and celebration of the Fourth of July.

Listen to podcasts about the evolution of the Fourth of July as you head out this weekend. Backstory with the American History Guys—Professors Peter Onuf, Ed Ayers, and Brian Balogh—hold a lively discussion on the evolution of July 4. Pauline Maier looks at changing meanings of the Declaration of Independence, and James Hientze looks at early celebrations of the day.

Backstory also directs visitors to further excellent resources, including Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech, The Meaning of the fourth of July for the Negro, National Archives resources on the Declaration of Independence, and History News Network's Top Five Myths About the Fourth of July.

Spain in the American Revolution

field_image
Bernardo de Galvez
Question

Why didn't Spain fight in the American Revolutionary War? I would have thought that they would have assisted the colonies, and then taken advantage of their post-war weakness to add North America to their empire.

Answer

Spain was not a bystander to the American Revolutionary War, although that fact is rarely mentioned in cursory historical surveys. Spain's motivation to help the American colonists was driven by a desire to regain the land it had lost to Britain and, with other European powers, make incremental gains against British possessions in other parts of the world. Although some dreamers in Spain perhaps envisioned its eventual possession of the entire New World, I have found no evidence that such an idea guided its assistance to the American colonists.

Spain was not a bystander to the American Revolutionary War

France and Spain were at that time both under Bourbon kings, Louis XVI and Carlos III, respectively, whose American possessions had been significantly reduced by the 1763 Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years' (the French and Indian) War. At the beginning of the American War of Independence, American commissioners were sent to Europe by the Continental Congress to seek support for their cause. John Jay, American representative in Spain, found success. Americans promised both France and Spain the restoration of much of the land they had lost to the British in America. In April 1779, Spain committed to helping the Americans.

Financial Support

This help did not consist of Spanish troops to fight alongside Americans, but it was extensive nevertheless. The Spanish and French kings provided large loans and outright contributions of money to the Americans. Spain laundered this money, as we would say today, through a fictitious private trading company, Roderique Hortalez and Company, operating out of the Lesser Antilles, which sent both money and war material directly to the Americans. The money helped support the Americans' new currency, the Continental, and also made it possible for the Americans to bring in foreign military officers, such as Augustus von Steuben, Casimir Pulaski, and Thaddeus Kosciuszko, to fight for them.

Land Battles

Spain began a military campaign of its own against the British in Florida and Louisiana. From 1779 through 1782, the Spanish Governor of Louisiana, Don Bernardo de Gàlvez, conducted a series of military actions against the British to retake forts that Spain had earlier lost to the British, succeeding in the Mississippi River Valley, and at Baton Rouge, Natchez, Mobile, and Pensacola. In 1782, Spain also succeeded in wresting back the Bahamas from the British.

Naval Support

A very substantial form of Spain's support for the Americans involved a strategy of joining Britain's other European competitors in tying up British naval resources by engaging them elsewhere than in Britain's American colonies. Spain did this, for example, against Gibraltar and Minorca, and together with France sent a fleet into the English Channel to menace the British coast and tie up more British ships. Most of the European maritime powers, including Spain, united against Britain's effort to interrupt their trade with America. With both France and Spain (and Holland) indirectly in the fray, Britain's navy was outmatched and could not effectively concentrate its military force in America. Spanish ships joined with French ships in the naval blockade of the British army at Yorktown in 1781, preventing General Cornwallis's resupply by the British navy, resulting in his surrender.

Bibliography

Thomas E. Chàvez, Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002).

Light Townsend Cummins, Spanish Observers and the American Revolution, 1775-1783 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991).

Winston De Ville, ed., Yo Solo: The Battle Journal of Bernardo de Gàlvez during the American Revolution (New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1978).

David French, The British Way in Warfare, 1688-2000 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990).

Images:
"Prise de Pensacola," Illus. in: Recueil d'estampes representant les différents événements de la Guerre qui a procuré l'indépendance aux Etats Unis de l'Amérique ... / Nicolas Ponce. Paris : Ponce et Godefroy, [1784?], Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

"El Ecsmo Senor Conde De Galves," Museo Nacional de Historia, Castillo de Chapultepec, Mexico.

Detail from A. R. Mengs' 1761 portrait of Carlos III, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

African and Native Americans in Colonial and Revolutionary Times

field_image
detail of sketch of Joseph Louis Cook by John Trumbull, 1785, Yale Art Gallery
Question

I am trying to find information on a person who lived before and during the American Revolution. I remember seeing a footnote about this person's life in a documentary once, but that was a couple years ago and I do not remember his name. This is what I remember: He was a slave (I do not know whether he was born a slave or brought from Africa). He learned to read and write, and due to his owner's failing eyesight he learned to handle business matters. At some point he either escaped or was freed. He was not able to gain employment with his writing skills. He left city life for the frontier. I think he became a scout and had a connection with the U.S. side during the war. Later he married into an Indian tribe, I do not know which. He used his business knowledge to benefit the tribe. Perhaps my memory is faulty and I am amalgamating two different people.

Answer

You have identified a person who I'd like to know more about myself! History is always about solving puzzles and mysteries, and I have looked closely at the clues your question provides: African ancestry, slave status, literacy, sympathy with the Continental Army during the Revolution, and connections to a Native American community. But a cursory search through the historical literature hasn't turned up one individual with this particular life story. Several different individuals have elements of it, however.

Joseph Louis Cook and Pierre Bonga

One such person is Joseph Louis Cook, the son of an African-American father and an Abenaki mother who had both been taken captive by the Iroquois. Cook himself was raised in the Mohawk community and played a prominent role fighting on behalf of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. The Mohawk are a matrilineal people (they trace their kinship and identity through their mothers), and so Cook would have likely identified himself as a member of the Iroqouis confederacy; he married a Mohawk woman and served as a diplomatic chief of the Oneida.

a cursory search through the historical literature hasn't turned up one individual with this particular life story

Another individual was Pierre Bonga, whose parents had been enslaved and then freed by a British officer on Mackinack Island in Michigan. Pierre went on to work in the fur trade in what became Minnesota and married an Ojibwe woman; at least one of their children, George, also worked in the fur trade and is known as the first African-American born in Minnesota. Unlike the Mohawk, the Ojibwe are patrilineal, tracing their tribal identity through their fathers, so it seems likely that George would have thought of himself as African-American rather than Ojibwe.

Crispus Attucks

Another prominent person in this time period was Crispus Attucks, the first person killed in the Boston Massacre. His father had been enslaved and his mother was a Natick Indian; Attucks himself was a slave who escaped and became very active in the Revolutionary movement in Boston. Whereas the men mentioned above were probably born free, Attucks was likely born a slave and that status may have influenced his identification as an African-American. Certainly he is remembered as one of our African-American heros of the American Revolution, and his Native ancestry is underemphasized.

Natick Indians spoke a language from the Algonquin language family and likely possessed cultural futures similar to other Northeastern Algonquin peoples, including patrilineal kinship. But the Native world of the Northeast was in such flux at this moment in history that it is difficult to say for certain how kinship practices influenced the identity of men like Crispus Attucks. I speak of these tribal communities in the past tense, but of course they still exist today and practice many of the same cultural traditions.

African-Native Interactions

The reference you make to the individual's literacy reminds me of Frederick Douglass's experience as a slave in Baltimore, where his master's wife taught him to read and write. Douglass remarked that American slaves thought themselves the most forsaken of God's children, until they met the American Indian. The history of African-Native interactions in North America goes back to the 1526 expedition of Lucas Vasquez de Allyon, a Spanish soldier who established a colony at the mouth of the Peedee River in South Carolina. Four months later, Allyon died and the colony fell apart; the 100 enslaved Africans that Allyon brought with him were free to join local Native communities.

we have to recognize that ideas about racial and cultural identity have changed significantly over time

When we consider this long history, then—one that dates back to the very invasion of the Americas—we have to recognize that ideas about racial and cultural identity have changed significantly over time. As i indicated above, these men that we remember as African-American today may not have thought of themselves that way. Native peoples were in power long enough through the 18th century to exert considerable influence over how their communities functioned and how they determined belonging. So even though Frederick Douglass's estimation of Native-African relations may have rung true in the nineteenth century (after Native nations had been removed from the Southeast and their lands taken from them in Northeast), it was unlikely that all Native people thought their Creator had forsaken them in the 18th century.

Similarly, African-American literature flourished in the 18th century, as freed slaves wrote their life histories. Dozens of these tracts have survived, emerging from a time in our history when whites did not universally see slave literacy as a threat to the social order. I suspect if the story you seek exists in one person, it is to be found in this body of slave narratives. Not coincidentally, the Removal and dispossession of Indians occurred around the same time as increased repression of African-Americans, both free and enslaved, in the 1830s.

I suspect if the story you seek exists in one person, it is to be found in this body of slave narratives.
Effect of the Revolutionary War

What changed between the relative autonomy enjoyed by Native and African Americans in the 18th century and the oppression and dispossession they experienced in the 19th century? The American Revolution. This was an event driven by a desire for freedom from the political authority of Great Britain and a desire to control Indian lands that Britain had largely prevented American colonists from settling. Despite these twin aims, men like Joseph Louis Cook (later known as Colonel Louis) fought for the Americans for their own strategic reasons—not to advance American interests, but to advance what he perceived as Iroquois interests. The ideal of freedom promoted by the Founding Fathers did not extend to anyone but free white males, but of course men like Crispus Attucks and many others fought to be included in this vision.

It was a tough road and remained so—after the colonists finally eliminated the British presence in the War of 1812, African Americans and Native Americans were left to deal with a regime that had no interest in their freedom or their preservation as autonomous people. The slave-led Haitian Revolution and slave revolts in the new United States drove various states, particularly in the South, to crack down on what freedoms enslaved people enjoyed, while at the same time conspiring with the federal government to dispossess Indians of their lands through Removal. The United States only exercised a vague authority over places like Minnesota and Michigan (then known as the Northwest Territory), where the Bonga family settled. It's possible that the individual you seek indeed settled in one of these loosely-controlled areas after learning that the opportunity he sought was not available in the states. For example, even though he fought with the Americans and presumably should have found a home in the United States, Cook actually went to Canada with a group of Mohawks after the Revolutionary War.

African Americans and Native Americans were left to deal with a regime that had no interest in their freedom or their preservation as autonomous people.

Your question strikes at the heart of an American history that has been largely ignored, that of the productive relationships between Indians and African Americans. While there is some tension between certain members of these groups today, as seen in the controversy over the status of the Cherokee Freedmen, I believe it is safe to say that such tensions are a product of how the United States expanded in the 19th century, not inherent racism or animosity between them.

For more information

Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

William Lorenz Katz, Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage. New York: Atheneum, 1986.

William Loren Katz, The Black West: a Documentary and Pictorial History of the African American Role in the Expansion of the United States. New York: Harlem Moon/Broadway Books, 2005.

Bibliography

Daniel Mandell, Tribe, Race, History: Native Americans in Southern New England, 1780-1880. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Celia Naylor, African Cherokees in Indian Territory: From Chattel to Citizens. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderlands of the American Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

Fort Laurens [OH]

Description

Named in honor of Henry Laurens, then president of the Continental Congress, Fort Laurens was built in 1778 in an ill-fated campaign to attack the British at Detroit. Supplying this wilderness outpost was its downfall, as its starving garrison survived on boiled moccasins and withstood a month-long siege by British-led Indians. The fort was abandoned in 1779. Today, only the outline of the fort remains, but a small museum commemorates the frontier soldier, presents a video giving the fort's history, and displays archaeological artifacts from the fort's excavation. The large park surrounding the museum is the location for periodic military reenactments. The remains of the soldiers who died defending the fort are buried in a crypt in the museum wall and at the Tomb of the Unknown Patriot of the American Revolution.

A second website covering the site, the Friends of Fort Laurens website, can be found here.

The site offers a short film; exhibits; and occasional recreational and educational events, including living history events.

Kings Mountain National Military Park

Description

Kings Mountain was a revolutionary war battle fought in South Carolina. It was significant because it was the first battle fought entirely between American soldiers and was the first major American victory after the invasion of Charleston by British forces in 1780. The park offers nature trails, a battle museum, and a variety events focusing on the history of the battle.

The site offers information about the museum and battlefield, as well as information about other attractions in the area and events in the park.

Valley Forge National Historical Park [PA]

Description

The Valley Forge National Historical Park presents the social and military histories of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. In 1777, the British succeeded in capturing the then capital of the United States, Philadelphia. The Continental Army, under George Washington (1732-1799), encamped in Valley Forge that winter in order to keep pressure on the British in Philadelphia, while avoiding attack and the need for winter transportation, which was rendered nearly impossible given weather conditions. While at Valley Forge, the army received training from Baron Friedrich Wilhelm Augustus von Steuben (1730-1794), increasing its military prowess. Sites include a memorial chapel, Washington's headquarters, a brigade encampment, and the farmhouse in which General James Varnum (1748-1789) quartered.

The site offers an 18-minute introductory film, exhibits, guided tours, a cell phone tour, trolley tours, living history interpreters, educational programs, Junior Ranger tours and activities, library and archive access, a summer teachers' institute, and two sites which sell refreshments. The library and archive collections are non-circulating and only accessible by appointment. The website offers audio and video podcasts, a curriculum guide, and suggested reading. The park also offers a unique program, wherein children can muster into the Continental Army, learning about different aspects of army life each session. "Veteran" students assist with teaching newcomers.

Washington's headquarters is currently closed for restoration.

Ninety Six National Historic Site [SC]

Description

The Ninety Six National Historic Site preserves the original 1781 Star Fort and the field of two Revolutionary War battles.

The location offers tours of a variety of fully restored structures, as well as the reconstructed Stockade Fort and siege trenches and the Black Swan Tavern. The location also features a variety of programs throughout the year, including interpretive history events and demonstrations. The website offers a brief history of the location as well as visitor information, an events calendar, and resources for teachers including field trip information. In order to contact the website via email, use the "contact us" link located on the left side of the webpage.

Saratoga National Historical Park [NY]

Description

It was in Saratoga that in 1777 American forces forced a major British army to surrender. The victory secured foreign recognition and support that enabled the American forces to win the war. In addition to the battlefield, the park is host to the Schuyler House, the home of American General Philip Schuyler, and the Saratoga Monument, a 155-foot obelisk commentating the Battle of Saratoga.

The park offers walking tours, a visitor center, and tours of the Shuyler House. The website offers detailed historical information, visitor information, and a calendar of events. In order to contact the site via email, use the "contact us" link located on the left side of the webpage.

Yorktown Battlefield [VA]

Description

Yorktown Battlefield is notable for being the location of the British surrender during the Revolutionary War. The park hosts a variety of special events throughout the year commemorating the battle, as well as tours of the battlefield and town. Colonial Williamsburg and historic Jamestown are also located only minutes away from Yorktown.

The park offers ranger-led tours, as well as a variety of programs including the Young Soldiers Program, where kids join a costumed interpreter to learn about life as a soldier, and artillery demonstrations. The website offers a detailed history of the park, as well as visitor information, and an events calendar. In order to contact the park via email, use the "email us" link located on the left side of the webpage.

Arkansas Post National Memorial [AR]

Description

The Arkansas Post National Memorial commemorates the first European colony to be built in the Mississippi River Valley. The post was established by the French in 1686 on the site of a Quapaw village. Today the site presents its more than 300 years of social history. The post played a part in the fur trade, Civil War, and Revolutionary War—most specifically the 1783 Colbert Raid, the singular Revolutionary War military action to occur in Arkansas.

The site offers an introductory video, guided tours, self-guided tours, exhibits, musket and cannon demonstrations, Junior Ranger activities, educational programs, and outreach programs. Reservations are required for guided tours and all educational programming. The website offers a maze and word search.