How I observe Independence Day

Readings and music about national identity

The Fourth of July is a celebration for many. For me it is a time to reflect on what America is, what it has been, and what it might yet be.

My parents were part of the Back-to-the-Land movement in the 1960s and 70s, which was part of a larger rejection of national mythology, and so I was raised with a healthy skepticism about allegiance to the flag. Both of my grandfathers were veterans, but they didn’t talk about their war experiences much, and none of us flew flags from our front porches. Even my maternal grandfather, who kept a photo of Ronald and Nancy Reagan on the wall above the kitchen table, was not one for overt patriotism.

Church superseded state in our family.

Although my upbringing was conservative, or perhaps because it was conservative, I was steeped in suspicion of government from an early age. So when I began studying American literature in graduate school, texts like Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” resonated with me. I was fascinated by the clash between John Winthrop’s idea of a City upon a Hill and Handsome Lake’s origin story, “How America Was Discovered.” It’s a short text, and I’ll include it below, by way of Jordan E. Taylor’s blog (which itself references Arthur Parker’s transcription). I should say that there are plenty of problems with oral stories transcribed into written texts by white anthropologists. But I think the core idea holds true enough to share:

HOW AMERICA WAS DISCOVERED

A great queen [Isabella of Spain] had among her servants a young minister. Upon a certain occasion she requested him to dust some books that she had hidden in an old chest. Now when the young man reached the bottom of the chest he found a wonderful book [the Bible] which he opened and read. It told that the white men had killed the son of the Creator [Jesus] and it said, moreover, that he had promised to return in three days and then again forty but that he never did. All his followers then began to despair but some said, “He surely will come again some time.” When the young preacher read this book he was worried because he had discovered that he had been deceived and that his Lord was not on earth and had not returned when he promised. So he went to some of the chief preachers and asked them about the matter and they answered that he had better seek the Lord himself and find if he were not on the earth now. So he prepared to find the Lord and the next day when he looked out into the river he saw a beautiful island and marveled that he had never noticed it before.  As he continued to look he saw a castle built of gold in the midst of the island and he marveled that he had not seen the castle before. Then he thought that so beautiful a palace on so beautiful an isle must surely be the abode of the son of the Creator. Immediately he went to the wise men and told them what he had seen and they wondered greatly and answered that it must indeed be the house of the Lord. So together they went to the river and when they came to it they found that it was spanned by a bridge of gold. Then one of the preachers fell down and prayed a long time and arising to cross the bridge turned back because he was afraid to meet his Lord. Then the other crossed the bridge and knelt down upon the grass and prayed but he became afraid to go near the house. So the young man went boldly over to attend to the business at hand and walking up to the door knocked.

A handsome man welcomed him into a room and bade him be of ease. “I wanted you,” he said. “You are a bright young man; those old fools will not suit me for they would be afraid to listen to me.  Listen to me, young man, and you will be rich.  Across the ocean there is a great country of which you have never heard. The people there are virtuous; they have no evil habits or appetites but are honest and single-minded. A great reward is yours if you enter into my plans and carry them out. Here are five things. Carry them over to the people across the ocean and never shall you want for wealth, position or power. Take these cards, this money, this fiddle, this whiskey and this blood corruption and give them all to the people across the water. The cards will make them gamble away their goods and idle away their time, the money will make them dishonest and covetous, the fiddle will make them dance with women and their lower natures will command them, the whiskey will excite their minds to evil doing and turn their minds, and the blood corruption will eat their strength and rot their bones.”

The young man thought this a good bargain and promised to do as the man had commanded him. He left the palace and when he had stepped over the bridge it was gone, likewise the golden palace and also the island. Now he wondered if he had seen the Lord but he did not tell the great ministers of his bargain because they might try to forestall him. So he looked about and at length found Columbus to whom he told the whole story. So Columbus fitted out some boats and sailed out into the ocean to find the land on the other side. When he had sailed for many days on the water the sailors said that unless Columbus turned about and went home they would behead him but he asked for another day and on that day land was seen and that land was America. Then they turned around and going back reported what they had discovered. Soon a great flock of ships came over the ocean and white men came swarming into the country bringing with them cards, money, fiddles, whiskey and blood corruption.

Now the man who had appeared in the gold palace was the devil and when afterward he saw what his words had done he said that he had made a great mistake and even he lamented that his evil had been so enormous.

Texts like Douglass’s speech and Handsome Lake’s story make it difficult for me to observe Independence Day without sorrow. Whatever pride I might take in our founding documents or in the democratic experiment that seems so imperiled now is balanced by grief. It is, in the words of James Welch’s character Fools Crow, “A happiness that sleeps with sadness.”

Even so, I believe every American should know Thomas Paine’s “The American Crisis” and Benjamin Franklin’s “Rules By Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced to a Small One.” Primary texts like these and the passionate personalities they reveal among the Founders are the lifeblood of Lin Manuel Miranda’s unforgettable Hamilton.

I enjoyed discussing these things with students long before the term anti-racism emerged, and I think there are some affinities between the multicultural approach and bolder views, such as The 1619 Project. But nuance is lost if the Founders are remembered only as white supremacists. We are a nation that has always produced its own antithesis. A nation that is not only irreducible to a single identity, but also irreducible to a single critique. For every colonial conquest and violation of liberty there has been a dissenting voice, a mobilized protest. For every Christian imperialist there has been a Quaker or a Mennonite. And if not a Muslim, Jew, Hindu, or pagan for every Christian, enough to say that we’ve never ever been a theocracy.

Independence Day seems to inspire binary reactions these days. One requires radical forgetting in an attempt to reclaim American greatness. This strikes me as a willfully ignorant (and therefore dangerous) form of nationalism. But the other increasingly suggests that our national experiment was rotten from the start. I don’t follow either school, though I sympathize with some of the reasoning in each. If there is a middle ground, it might be best represented by Barack Obama’s famous speech, “A More Perfect Union.” I can think of no better way to observe Independence Day than to read or listen to Obama’s speech, which examines history with eyes wide open but also faces the future with optimism. A happiness, or hope, that shines through the tears.

And so, rather than saluting the flag, I give you some of the many competing interpretations of this national holiday. I’ll close with music. America gave birth to each of these artists. How do you make sense of the disagreement between them? Is it possible to be one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all?