Scandal, Protest, Goofiness, and Grandeur at the U.S. Bicentennial

"President Gerald Ford entered the U.S. Capitol. He then made his way to the National Statuary Hall, strode across its marble floor, and approached an ornate, thirty-five-hundred-pound, five-foot-tall, four-foot-wide cast-iron safe that had been sealed a hundred years earlier. Photographers stood poised, fingertips hovering over shutter buttons."

"John Adams, in Philadelphia, wrote to his wife, Abigail, in Massachusetts, that he hoped succeeding generations of Americans would celebrate the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence 'with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.'"

"Early American Fourths of July brought out the star-spangled bandstand, helping to build a sense of national unity where there hadn't really been one, not because Americans agreed about what the anniversary meant but because they disagreed, publicly, boisterously, and pyrotechnically."

The United States prepared to celebrate its two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary, reflecting on the less seamless bicentennial celebration in 1976. President Gerald Ford opened a sealed cast-iron safe in the Capitol's National Statuary Hall on July 1, 1976, just before the Bicentennial. John Adams envisioned Independence Day celebrations with pageantry and festivities to build national unity. Early Fourth of July observances featured public disagreement and celebration, fostering cohesion despite differing interpretations of the nation's founding. The tradition of elaborate anniversary celebrations every fifty or hundred years began in 1826, the jubilee of independence, when Thomas Jefferson reflected on the Declaration's principles.

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