Given the inherent struggles and distractions of our everyday work-filled lives, it's somewhat understandable that we often take Independence Day for granted. A summer day off from work is a good day indeed, no matter the reason. But the most important day in American history, in the history of Liberty, in fact, is deserving of our official recognition, even if that wasn't always the case. Surprisingly, July 4th – our nation's defining day – was not set aside as an annual holiday until 1870, nearly a century after the Declaration of Independence was written and signed in 1776.
All that begs the question, what took us so long before officially commemorating the date?
To begin with, there was a war to win. The Declaration of Independence was a colonial gauntlet, thrown down at Britain's feet by freedom-seeking colonists who believed that man's "unalienable rights," his rights to "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" came from God and not King George III. Of course, the king disagreed vehemently and promptly sent his redcoats to secure law and order.
After the Revolutionary War was won, conflicts between political parties and some lingering pro-monarchy sentiment prevented July 4th from being commemorated. Democratic Republicans approved of Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration, which ultimately got the Revolutionary War going, but Federalists opposed a good deal of it, believing it was too anti-British.
During the war, colonists celebrated what was then just a "declared independence" during the summer of 1776 with parades, concerts, bonfires and public readings of the Declaration followed by the celebratory firing of cannons and muskets. They even held mock funerals for King George.
Celebrations followed a year later in 1777, particularly in Philadelphia, but they were sparse and inconsistent until after the war was won in 1783. In fact, the year 1783 saw the first recorded celebration of July 4th, when Moravians in Salem, NC, held a music programs called "The Psalm of Joy," which is celebrated to this day. And in 1778, no less a patriot than George Washington, then commander-in-chief of the continental army, tried to get the yearly commemoration to stick by issuing his soldiers double rations in honor of their commitment to freedom fighting.
Even still, July 4th would not see another major celebration until 1781, when Massachusetts became the first state to make the date an official holiday. After the War of 1812 – which historians refer to as Britain's attempted redo of the Revolutionary War – a spirit of patriotism swept the country, and by the 1820s, newly printed copies of the Declaration of Independence, listing July 4, 1776 as the historic date of declaration, were making the rounds.
Ultimately, however, the significance of celebrating July 4th may have stemmed from the death of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two patriots of the famed Committee of Five that drafted and presented the Declaration to the continental congress in 1776. Ironically, their deaths, both fell on the date, July 4, 1826, that marked the 50th anniversary of the Declaration's issuance.
The idea to make July 4th an official, government-sanctioned holiday was not considered until 1870, when Senator Hannibal Hamlin (Republican, Maine) incorporated it into a Senate bill he sponsored entitled "Legal Holidays in the District." It was originally meant to be a federal holiday for employees and the District of Columbia. The date did not become a paid holiday until 1938, when it was legislated as such by a joint resolution of Congress. Regular employees were not mentioned in the law because so-called "national" holidays do not exist in the United States. For that to be the case, and because of the Constitution's protection of states rights, all fifty states would have to observe issue a similar law before it could be considered a true "national" holiday. The President and Congress have the power to make holidays "official," but they can only do so for employees of the federal government.
Despite this rule, however, and the sluggishness in getting yearly Independence Day celebrations on the books, each of our nation's 50 states and its territories currently and regularly observe the Fourth of July holiday – most prominently with the creative and colorful use of fire works echoing battlefield explosions that helped secure our liberty.
