LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/wires/20010702/tCB00V3129.html

Monday, July 2, 2001

225th Anniversary of Independence

Associated Press Writer

    WASHINGTON-- When Thomas Jefferson held the first Independence Day
celebration at the White House 200 years ago this week, he underscored the
fervent prediction made by John Adams in July 1776.
    Adams was convinced that the day the United States declared
independence would be remembered with celebrations and "illuminations from
one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever
more."
    This year, on the 225th anniversary of independence, as rockets
flash-freeze the Washington Monument in bolts of patriotic light, Adams'
prediction stands unchallenged.
    The fact that Jefferson, the declaration's author, and Adams, its
foremost advocate, both died on its 50th anniversary, July 4, 1826,
cemented the date in the national mind.
    In 1831, former President Monroe, one of the last of the
revolutionary generation, also died on the Fourth of July, "opening his
eyes when the noise of firing began at midnight," it was written.
    Over 225 years the celebration has been marked by fireworks, cannon
salutes, the blasting of ship horns and the pealing of church bells, band
concerts, parades, orations, political rallies and the re-enactment of
battles.
    An extraordinary compilation of the events of the Fourth of July has
been assembled by James R. Heintze, a librarian at American University.
Posted on the university's Web site, it includes an ongoing effort to
document where presidents were and exactly what they did on each
Independence Day.
    On July 4, 1861, for example, President Lincoln reported to Congress
on Confederate defiance of the national government's insistence on
continuing the Union. He reviewed 29 Army regiments newly arrived from New
York. And he raised the Stars and Stripes to the top of a 100 -foot
flagstaff.
    Two years later, as news tumbled in of the decisive Union victory at
Gettysburg and the fall of the Confederate fortress at Vicksburg, Miss.,
Lincoln postponed his Independence Day remarks until July 7.
    On the Fourth of July, Lincoln said, "the enemies of the declaration
that all men are created equal had to turn tail and run."
    The celebration of Independence Day was suspended through most of the
South after the Civil War. Its gradual restoration over the next 40 years
marked the growing reconciliation between the two formerly warring
sections.
    Daniel Webster, the future senator and secretary of state, delivered
the first of his many Fourth of July orations in 1800 as a student at
Dartmouth College. He gave his last in 1851 at the laying of the
cornerstone of an expanded U.S. Capitol, imploring his country not to
abandon the federal Union.
    President Polk presided in 1848 over the laying of the cornerstone of
the Washington Monument. Like so many American ceremonies marking new
beginnings, it was held on the Fourth of July.

    That was the date chosen in 1828 when John Quincy Adams turned the
first shovelful of earth for the building of the Chesapeake and Ohio
Canal. Adams was the first president to hear the Marine Band play "Hail to
the Chief," a musical salute that proved more enduring than the canal.
    Fireworks were used from the beginning to give Independence Day a
bang and a roar.
    The intentions were good, but the consequences were often tragic.
    Some 8,000 people were gathered on the South Lawn of the White House
on the evening of July 4, 1845, when a stand of 12 rockets suddenly
toppled. The exploding missiles went sideways, not up, and sliced through
the spectators. Two people were killed.
    Fireworks injuries and deaths became so common on Independence Day
that efforts were made to restrain the carnage.
    In 1909, Washington and other cities declared their first "safe and
sane" Fourth of July celebrations aimed at ending fireworks mayhem.
    From the 1920s onward, the grounds of the Washington Monument became
the place where Americans by the hundreds of thousands celebrated the
Fourth.
    But on July 4, 1962, President Kennedy chose Philadelphia's
Independence Hall to muse on the spirit of liberty.
    "The theory of independence is as old as man himself, and it was not
invented in this hall," Kennedy said.
    "But it was in this hall that the theory became a practice; that the
word went out to all, in Thomas Jefferson's phrase, that 'the God who gave
us light gave us liberty at the same time."'
   
- - -
    On the Net: Fourth of July celebrations database:
http://american.edu/heintze/fourth.htm
- - -
    EDITOR'S NOTE -Lawrence L. Knutson has covered the White House,
Congress and Washington's history for more than 30 years.

Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times