Celebrating the Fourth of July, 1777 style

Throughout history, milestone Independence Day anniversaries have popped up when Americans needed them most.

Take the nation’s Centennial in 1876. After surviving a second war with Britain (when our capital, including both the White House and the Capitol Building, was torched), a horrific economic depression in the 1830s, and the bloodiest war in U.S. history in the 1860s, Americans were ready to let their hair down and celebrate. Likewise, the Bicentennial in 1976 was the perfect tonic for a nation still reeling from the deep funk caused by the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War and Watergate.

The anniversary stood ready to bolster us once more with America250. Folks of all partisan stripes agree that the American Spirit in 2026 can use a fresh infusion of the Spirit of ’76.

However, a strong case can be made that the most important, most consequential and most meaningful of all the preceding 249 anniversaries was the very first. This is the forgotten story of how America marked July 4, 1777.

The American Revolution was in its third year then. The fighting that began at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts in April 1775, followed by the Battle of Bunker Hill that June, showed the plucky Patriots could hold their own against a global superpower.

After so-so successes in early 1776, Washington’s army was driven out of New York City, then, as now, America’s commercial capital. The decisive year ended with the capture of a Hessian outpost in Trenton, N.J., providing a desperately needed morale boost.

Then came a tortuous winter and “the times that try men’s souls,” as Thomas Paine so eloquently put it.

The mere fact that the 13 colonies had clung together and made it to July 1777 was reason to celebrate. That their ragtag armies were still carrying on the struggle seemed almost miraculous.

So, Continental leaders made sure that July 4 was a blowout. And their celebrations were remarkably similar to ours today.

1777’s biggest bash was in Philadelphia, the infant nation’s capital. The Declaration had been signed there, and the Continental Congress still met in its stately Pennsylvania State House.

An account published in the Virginia Gazette reported that the City of Brotherly Love went all out with bell-ringings, military parades, concerts, banquets with toasts to America’s future, large crowds cheering enthusiastically and massive bonfires called “illuminations.” Two activities—artillery salutes and a fireworks display—were especially significant. (We’ll see why in a moment.)

Likewise, Boston, still joyful after the hated British had evacuated Beantown the year before, organized activities all around town, including fireworks and artillery shells fired over its Common.

Baltimore, whose port was booming after the fall of New York, had a public reading of the Declaration. It threw a massive public dinner, complete with 13 toasts offered for each of the 13 colonies, followed by military parades and—you guessed it—a 13-gun cannon salute and fireworks.

Father south, Charleston, S.C., had double reason to celebrate.

Almost exactly one year earlier, its defenders had turned back a British invasion fleet in Charleston Harbor. There were patriotic speeches, special church services, more dinners, more toasts and the military firing more salutes.

It’s that last attraction, coupled with all the fireworks displays, that’s telling. We take annual nocturnal pyrotechnical displays for granted. They’re lit; they go bang; pretty colors light up the darkness, and the crowd ooohs and aaahs in unison.

But fireworks had additional importance in 1777.

They’re propelled by gunpowder, after all. Yet not only was that the lifeblood of the Continental Army (firing their flintlock muskets and cannons), but this vital resource was in chronically short supply. Washington’s men often went into early battles with barely enough powder on hand. Getting hold of it was a massive challenge.

There were small mills scattered around the colonies in places like Portsmouth, N.H., and elsewhere. British supplies were captured from time to time. Although France had yet to ally with the Patriot cause, it secretly sold us precious powder, though it first had to make the long Atlantic crossing to get here.

Little wonder, then, that Colonial soldiers were constantly admonished to not waste gunpowder.

So why, with that commodity in such perilously short supply, were they burning it up for fireworks displays?

Because then, as now, fireworks made a special occasion even more so. Patriot leaders were determined to celebrate the Declaration’s first anniversary as a massive show of public faith, a demonstration of their belief that, although the war still raged, independence was already a reality.

And they were willing to use their scarcest, most precious resource to demonstrate their commitment to that conviction.

So, as you watch the red, white and blue balls of fire breaking through the darkness on Fourth of Julys to come, remember that when our Founding Fathers likewise did many Julys earlier, they were giving evidence not only of their belief that they would succeed… but of their optimism that we would succeed, too.

Why we celebrate on July 4 instead of 5

It was a typically muggy summer in Philadelphia. The oppressive heat and humidity made conditions miserable inside the Pennsylvania State House’s Assembly Room. That aggravated conditions for the four dozen or so men gathered in that sweatbox. Since most of them were lawyers, they were prone to arguing; the oven-like heat in the meeting room as June gave way to July made it miserable.

There was plenty to argue about, too, because the fate of their homeland was hanging in the balance.

Think we’re talking about the run-up to passing the Declaration of Independence? Nope, guess again.

Exactly one year earlier, almost the very day, before the upstart colonials cut ties with the mother country, they threw one last Hail Mary diplomatic pass in an attempt to make up with King George III and Parliament.

This is the story of the largely forgotten Olive Branch Petition.

The Second Continental Congress had a lot on its plate in the spring of 1775. The Revolution against British authority, which had simmered for a dozen years, finally broke out in battle in April. With no other governing authority around, the Congress met in May and immediately got to work. Delegates from 11 of the 13 colonies were on hand for the first session. (Rhode Island’s guys got there late; strong loyalist support in Georgia prevented that colony from joining the body until July.)

The immediate task was raising, equipping and paying for an army. They were roughly 90 days into the conflict when some delegates felt it was time to (in John Lennon’s words) “give peace a chance.”

And so, they set about debating and hammering out what came to be called the Olive Branch Petition.

It basically boiled down to a simple plea stating that despite the recent fighting, the 13 Colonies were still loyal to King George III (Honest! Scout’s honor!) and wanted to work things out so they could remain part of the dear old Mother Country. They insisted that it was still possible to craft a plan that would avoid future bloodshed so that everyone could go on living, in the words of classic English fairy tales, “happily ever after,” just as they had done for the preceding 150 years.

It was passed on July 5, 1775. John Hancock affixed his famous signature, followed by the other delegates, on July 8, and it was promptly sent by sailing ship to London.

John Adams was displeased with the move. He was moving closer to wanting nothing less than full independence from Britain, and wrote in a letter to a friend that the petition was a complete waste of time. Unfortunately for Adams, the Brits intercepted his letter and rushed it to London, where it arrived about the same time as the Petition. That was seen as proof in many eyes that the Colonists were insincere at best, and two-faced at worst.

George III responded with a royal Proclamation of Rebellion in August. And that was that. From that point on it was “on like Donkey Kong,” as future generations would say.

London heard from the gang in Philadelphia again 364 days later, when the Continental Congress passed a little thing called the Declaration of Independence.

The original Olive Branch petition (the one sent to George & Company) is housed in the British National Archives in Kew, near London. (Congress kept a copy for its records, and it’s now in the National Archives in Washington.) Looking at today, one is tempted to indulge in a game of “What if?” What if George III had been less bellicose in his approach to his rebellious subjects?

What if there had been more doves in Parliament willing to fight for peace? And the biggest what if of all… What if the Olive Branch Petition had succeeded?

Instead of celebrating Independence Day on July 4, we might be commemorating Reconciliation Day on July 5—while waving the Union Jack and singing “God Save the King.”

Have comments, questions or suggestions you’d like to share with Mark? Message him at jmp.press@gmail.com.