America 50: The First Jubilee

As July 4, 1826 approached, the country prepared for its national jubilee, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Americans swelled with pride in their nation and in the stirring manifesto that proclaimed that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Much had happened in the nation’s first 50 years. The country had prevailed in its war of independence, and its population had surged from two million to more than 10 million. The original 13 states had grown to 24, with the nation now stretching westward to the Mississippi River and beyond. Visionaries foresaw a country that would eventually span the continent to the Pacific Ocean.

The men who signed the Declaration shared a close bond. In challenging the mightiest empire on earth, they had pledged to each other “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” The 56 signers had ranged in age from 26-year-old Edward Rutledge to 70-year-old Benjamin Franklin, but time had taken its toll, and only three of the 56 remained: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Charles Carroll. Jefferson and Adams had an especially close tie to the Declaration. The former was its main author, while the latter was one of the five men the Continental Congress had chosen to finalize Jefferson’s draft.

Two of the largest jubilee celebrations were planned for Washington, D.C., the seat of government, and New York City, the country’s largest city. In Washington, a parade of military and government officials would proceed from Lafayette Square to the Capitol, where the Declaration would be read. Fireworks would cap off the day. In New York, a procession and fireworks were also planned. Two oxen were to be roasted, and attendees would partake of “(b)utts (casks) of beer…, and bread and cheese, with other proper condiments.”

Both cities sent invitations to the three surviving signers, whom a Washington, D.C., newspaper called “men so conspicuous for their public worth and services, and so elevated in the affections of the country.” They were cherished as the last living links to the Declaration. While age and the rigors of travel made their attendance unlikely, their thoughts and memories were sharp and focused.

See more: “July 4 in 1826” by L. H. Butterfield in the June 1955 issue of American Heritage

The 83-year-old Jefferson declined the invitations “(w)ith my regret that ill health forbids me the gratification of an acceptance.” He noted sadly that “(i)t adds sensibly to the sufferings of sickness, to be deprived by it of a personal participation in the rejoicings of that day.”

Jefferson longed, he wrote, to gather once more with the other living signers, “the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword.” He took comfort, he said, in “the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made.”

The 90-year-old Adams also sent his regrets, lamenting that “the present state of my health forbids me to indulge the hope of participating.”

Adams proudly called the jubilee “an event sanctioned by fifty years of experience” and hoped the anniversary of the Declaration’s signing “will become memorable by its increasing age, in proportion as its success shall demonstrate the blessings it imparts to our beloved country, and the maturity it may attain in the progress of time.” He harbored, he wrote, “(v)isions of future bliss in prospect, for the better condition of the human race, from this unparalleled event.”

Carroll, 78, could not attend, either. “The fatigue of such a journey, at my advanced age, and in this sultry season, discourages me from the attempt,” he explained.

By the afternoon of the jubilee, as joyous celebrations took place across the nation, the day became tinged with sadness, although most of the country would not learn of it for several days.

At 12:50 p.m., Jefferson died at his home at Monticello in Virginia. He had been in failing health but had clung to life until the jubilee, “gratified in his only wish, that this day and hour should be the moment of his death,” his grandson Thomas J. Randolph wrote that day. Jefferson had passed, Randolph noted, “as he lived, the same calm, serene, benevolent great man.”

About five hours later, Adams died at his home in Quincy, Mass. On his deathbed that afternoon, he had heard the roar of the cannons from his hometown’s celebration. When told it was the jubilee festivities, he replied, “It is a great and glorious day.” Perhaps the celebratory sounds brought his thoughts back to a letter he had written 50 years earlier expressing his hope that the annual anniversary of the Declaration’s signing would become “solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore.”

Across the country, newspaper editors and eulogists were stunned that two of the most distinguished signers had both died on the 50th anniversary. A Washington, D.C., newspaper called it “a coincidence so singular as to approach the marvelous.” Churchill C. Cambreleng, a congressman from New York, predicted that future generations would regard it “like the splendid fables of antiquity.” A reporter in Vermont consulted a mathematician, who estimated the chances of both men living as long as they did and dying on the jubilee was “one in twelve hundred millions.”

Others wondered if the deaths of Jefferson and Adams were more than mere happenstance. “It does, indeed,” one newspaper noted, “look like some Providential dispensation, that they should have been spared to witness the rejoicings of our jubilee.” President John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, viewed the deaths as “visible and palpable marks of Divine favor,” and to Senator Samuel Smith of Maryland, it was the work of “an All-seeing Providence, as a mark of approbation of their well spent lives.”

At least one person saw something nefarious. “And so old Mr. Adams is dead; on the 4th of July, too, just half a century after our Declaration of Independence…This is Euthenasia (sic), indeed,” claimed John Randolph, a second cousin of Jefferson.  “They have killed Mr. Jefferson, too, on the same day…” Randolph never explained who “they” were.

By the end of the day, the only surviving signer was Carroll, whom Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts called “an aged oak, standing alone on the plain… after all its contemporaries have been levelled with the dust.” Carroll would live another six years.

The Tradition Continues: A Brief History of Other Founding Anniversaries...

1876

Reunited after the blood Civil War, the nation celebrated its 100th birthday with a world’s fair in Philadelphia, officially called the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine but more commonly known as the Centennial Exposition. “Never before,” an exposition brochure proclaimed, “have the achievements of the industrial arts, the fine arts, and the sciences generally, shone with such luster as gilds this epoch of the nineteenth century.”

The fair, a coming-of-age celebration for the country, opened on May 10, 1876 and ran for six months. Admission was 50 cents, and the exhibition attracted more than nine million visitors. Attendees saw innovations such as Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone and a display of the hand and torch of what would become the Statue of Liberty. Many Americans got their first taste of root beer, as pharmacist Charles E. Hires gave away free samples of his new drink. Henry J. Heinz showed off his tomato ketchup, and Stephen F. Whitman offered boxes of chocolate candy.

See more: “1876: The Eagle Screams” by Lynne Cheney in the April 1974 issue of American Heritage

1926

Hoping to duplicate the success of 50 years earlier, Philadelphia hosted a six-month-long world’s fair in 1926 to mark the country’s Sesquicentennial Jubilee. The fair offered, its promoters said, “a visualization of the spiritual, scientific, economic, artistic and industrial progress that has been made…during the half century since the Centennial Exposition.”

Technological advances were showcased, including radio, electric refrigeration and talking motion pictures. The exhibition also featured such novelties as an 80-foot-tall replica of the Liberty Bell illuminated with 26,000 15-watt bulbs, and at the Maxwell House exhibit, more than a million free cups of coffee were served. On September 23, 1926, thousands flocked to the exposition to watch Gene Tunney wrest the heavyweight boxing crown from Jack Dempsey.

Overall attendance for the fair’s six months – about 6.5 million - was disappointing, however, and the fair lost money.

1976

July 4, 1976 will forevermore be known as the Day of the Tall Ships, as more than 225 sailing vessels from 31 countries sailed up the Hudson River in New York City to celebrate the nation’s Bicentennial. This armada, which the Associated Press called “the greatest maritime display in the nation’s history,” included square-riggers, barks, barkentines, topsail schooners and ketches.

The highlight of the day were the 16 tall-masted sailing ships, the kind that would have journeyed to and from New York in the 18th century. These tall ships came from Norway, Denmark, West Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Japan, Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union. An estimated seven million people watched this breathtaking display in person, and television networks broadcast the festivities to the rest of the nation and to the world. It was a much-needed respite for a country still reeling from Vietnam and the Watergate scandals.