Timothy Flint (1780-1840).

An Oration, Delivered at Leominster, July 4, 1815, before the Washington Benevolent Societies of Lancaster and Sterling and of Leominster and Fitchburg.

Worcester: Printed by William Manning, [1815]

Timothy Flint was born in Reading, Mass., graduated from Harvard, became a Congregational minister and then a missionary in the Ohio and Mississippi valley. He is best known today as the author of numerous early works about the American West. Here he addresses the united chapters of the Washington Benevolent Society of four Massachusetts towns. Washington Benevolent Societies were more akin to what we would today call PACS, or political action committees, organized to promote Federalist policies and candidates.

In his oration, Flint waxes eloquent on the virtues of the New England citizenry:

 “For with the labour and the sweat of freemen we cut down the trees; we remove the rocks; and instead of beautiful horses, luxuries and slaves, we rear men, respectable husbands and wives, father and mothers. We rear our children in schools and in churches, and there we expect they will gain habits of order, discipline, and the love of virtue. We learn them to know their rights, to be jealous of them and to respect themselves.  … We have seen the effect of Washington policy upon New-England.”

Joseph E. Sprague (1782-1852)

An Address Delivered before the Salem Charitable Mechanic Association, on Their Fourth Anniversary, July 4, 1821, in the North Meeting House

Salem, [Mass.]: Published by W. Palfray, Jr., 1821

In a letter dated Aug. 4, 1821, former President John Adams wrote to Sprague:

“I owe you many thanks for the present of an ingenious, entertaining and valuable oration, pronounced by you on the 4th of July, before the Salem Charitable Mechanic Association. I have read it with great pleasure, as I have all the orations which have been sent me this year. I have been much affected with the remarkable uniformity of principles and sentiments, and coincidence of topics, which pervades them all, although spoken in various cities and distant states. Such an harmonious train of thinking is an augury of great good to our country. It gives us proofs of a national character, of a national public opinion, cheering hopes of a lasting union, prosperity and happiness.

Read the full text of the aforementioned letter online through the National Archives. 

Edward Everett (1794-1865)

An Oration Delivered before the Citizens of Charlestown on the Fifty-Second Anniversary of the Declaration of the Independence of the United States of America

Charlestown, [Mass.]: Wheildon and Raymond; Boston: Hilliard,Gray, Little and Wilkins, 1828

One of the leading public figures of his day—minister, scholar, writer, congressman, governor, senator, diplomat, president of Harvard—Everett gave numerous of Fourth of July orations, speaking again at Charlestown in 1850 at the 75^th anniversary.

Charles William Cutter (1799-1856)

An Oration Pronounced before the Whigs of Portsmouth, on the Fourth of July, A.D. 1834

Portsmouth, N.H.: J.F. Shores, 1834

This address is overtly partisan, a Whig reaction to the Democratic administration of Andrew Jackson, in particular the veto, the spoils system, and his war against the Bank of the United States.

“The evil is, that the executive branch is encroaching, with giant strides, upon the rightful powers of all the other departments of the government; with the appalling prospect, that, if it not arrested in its career, it will engross to itself the powers which of right belong to all the other departments, and thus will entirely mar the beautiful harmony of our system; impairing private rights, destroying public liberty, and converting this this Republic, from a government of law, under which our rights, both public and private, are clearly defined, and our remedies for the infraction of those rights are known and respected, to a government under which both rights and remedies are dependent upon the caprices of one individual.” –p. 24.

He concludes:

“All I can say is, that action is wanted; not musing upon your wrongs, not meditating merely upon grievances, private or national—but action, constant, daily, united, unremitted action, directed to this point—to correct, to inform, to enlighten public sentiment. Without it defeat is inevitable, and the “gloom” which now overshadows the land will become thick darkness.  With it success is certain, and that “gloom” will be converted into “light and glory.” –pp. 31-32

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)

An Address Delivered in Marlboro’ Chapel, Boston, July 4, 1838

Boston: I. Knapp, 1838

Perhaps the best-known American abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison in 1831 in Boston founded The Liberator, which became the leading anti-slavery newspaper. Here we see his oratorical skills and uncompromising temperament on full display.  Dripping with irony, Garrison begins his address in fine style:

“Fellow Citizens: What a glorious day is this! What a glorious people are we! This the time-honored, wine-honored, toast-drinking, powder-wasting, tyrant-killing, fourth of July—consecrated, for the last sixty years, to bombast, to falsehood, to impudence, to hypocrisy. It is the great carnival of republican despotism, and of Christian impiety, famous the world over! Since we held it last year, we have kept securely in their chains, the stock of two millions, three hundred thousand slaves we then had on hand, in spite of every effort of fanaticism to emancipate them; and, through the goodness of God, to whom we are infinitely indebted for the divine institution of negro slavery, have been graciously enabled to steal some seventy thousand babes, the increase of that stock, and expect to steal a still greater number before ‘another glorious’ anniversary shall come round!”

Garrison continues in a similar vein for 42 pages, focusing his attention on the plight of African Americans but also recognizing the injustices committed by the United States against Native Americans:

“As to the Indian tribes, we have done the best we could to expel and exterminate them; and the blood upon our hands, and the gore upon our garments, show that our success has almost equaled our wishes. We have driven the Cherokees, at the point of the bayonet, into a distant wilderness, from their abodes of civilization—violated the most solemn treaties ever entered into between man and man—and committed nameless and numberless outrages upon the domestic security and personal rights of these hapless victims—all for the laudable purpose of getting their lands, that the ‘divine institution’ of slavery may be extended, and perpetuated to the latest generation, as ‘the corner-stone of our republican edifice!’

He concludes, “I use strong language, and will make no apology for it, on this occasion.”

Nathan Sidney Smith Beman, 1785-1871

The Western Continent. A Discourse Delivered in the First Presbyterian Church, Troy, July Fourth, 1841

Troy, N.Y.: N. Tuttle, 1841

In contrast to the firebrand Garrison, the Rev. Nathan Sidney Smith Beman, takes a more measured,  deliberative stance, as one might expect from a learned Presbyterian divine, spending the bulk of his Fourth of July oration on the discovery of the North American continent and the influence of the Protestant Reformation, the combination of which, he argues, has produced in America the separation of church and state, and “the great moral power … the radical principles of our government, and our religious freedom.” (p. 22)

Slavery’s existence is an unavoidable paradox. American history “has demonstrated that men may be clamorous for liberty, and record it in their own political oracles as an ‘unalienable’ right, and at the same time, frame oppression by law, and fasten chains on their fellows whom they declare, upon the title-page of their national history, to be their ‘equals.’ (p. 23)

“While we boast of our national freedom, who sympathizes with the down-trodden slave? on the morning of our National birthday, for example, which is hailed with songs of gladness by more than fourteen millions of free hearts, what chord of tenderness vibrates to the interests of three millions, in domestic bondage, among us? With a few noble exceptions, they have ‘no comforter.’ (p. 24)

While he avoids emotional appeals, Beman comes to a conclusion similar to Garrison’s and deserves to be better known.

Texas. Constitutional Convention (1845)

Journals of the Convention, Assembled at the City of Austin on the Fourth of July, 1845, for the Purpose of framing a Constitution for the State of Texas

Austin: Miner & Cruger, 1845

It was no accident that the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1845 began its deliberations on July 4, as a prelude to the admission of Texas as a state later that year.  The debates were extensive and intense, reflecting the divergent opinions of the delegates, most of whom were emigrants from southern states and apologists for slavery if not slaveholders themselves. More complete reporting appeared the following year in Debates of the Texas Constitution (Houston, 1846).

Our copy of the Journals is inscribed by George Washington Paschal (1812-1878). A talented lawyer, he moved to Texas in 1847 from Arkansas, where he had been Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court.

George R. Parburt

Oration, Delivered on Board the Ship Sylph in the Pacific Ocean, July 4, 1849 … Together with a Brief Account of Her Voyage from Panama to San Francisco

Geneva, N.Y.: I. & S.H. Parker, printers, 1849

Even on the waves at sea, Americans remembered the Fourth with due ceremony.

According to Alice Askins, “In 1849 George Parburt, former political editor of the Geneva Gazette, went to the California gold fields as part of the Ontario Trojan Band.  He wrote back to the paper describing the trip west, the scenery, and life in California.  His topics about California included real estate prices, crime, litigation, illness, dueling, vigilante activity, available jobs for women in California (very few, in his opinion, if they considered themselves respectable), and the postal service.”

Thomas B. Cuming (1827-1858)

An Oration Delivered by T.B. Cuming on the 77th Anniversary of American Independence, before the Citizens of Keokuk, Iowa, July 4, 1853

Keokuk, Iowa: Dispatch Print, 1853

As best we can tell, this is the first Fourth of July oration printed in Iowa. Only 4 copies are known: University of Iowa; Nebraska State Library; New-York Historical Society; and here at SMU. Cuming was the first secretary and then acting Governor of Nebraska Territory, 1854-1856.

Charles Edward Pickett (1820-1882)

Oration Delivered in the Congregational Church, Sacramento, California, July 4, 1857

San Francisco: Whitton, Towne & Co.’s Excelsior Steam Presses, 1857

Robert Cowan writes of Pickett: “an able but greatly eccentric character. He wrote many pamphlets, and, from whichever point of view they may be regarded, their deeply radical nature cannot fail to engross the interested reader.” James Hart describes him as “a dabbler in law, a political and polemical pamphleteer, and an agitator for the Confederacy.” In this Fourth of July oration, Pickett castigates politicians and newspapers and, in his typically contrarian manner, argues against the idea that democracy is the best form of government, preferring instead absolute monarchy, “provided a sovereign be wise and virtuous.”

Charles Francis Adams (1807-1886)

An Oration, Delivered before the Municipal Authorities of the City of Fall River, July 4, 1860.

Fall River, [Mass.]: Almy & Milne, Daily News Steam Printing House, 1860.

The son and grandson of U.S. presidents, Adams here delivers one of the classic Fourth of July addresses, on the eve of the Civil War and at the height of sectional division. With no time for nostalgia or mindless patriotism, he tells his audience, “The past will take care of itself. What we have to do is with the present hour. The noble patriots have gone to their reward. What we must consider is our own duty.” He then develops his argument, appealing to the facts of history and reason, against three main misconceptions of his day: that the main object of the U.S. government was the protection of property; that liberty belonged only to the white race; that present day citizens had no right to change “dangerous or vicious institutions.”

Over 2000 copies were printed. Fifty-nine survive today in institutions, with three copies in Texas: at Texas Southern University, at UT Austin, and here at SMU.

John Alfred Poor (1808-1871)

The Railway. Remarks at Belfast, Maine, July 4, 1867

Portland, Maine: B. Thurston & Co., 1868

The first edition was published in Boston in 1867 (also at the DeGolyer).

As best we can tell, this is the first Fourth of July oration devoted not to history or politics but to technology. “Next to the enjoyment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, no question so directly concerns every man, woman, and child of the community, as that of cheap locomotion.” (p. 6).

Thomas Ewing (1829-1896)

Speech of Maj. Gen. Thomas Ewing, Jr., of Kansas, at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ National Convention, at Cooper Institute, July 4, 1868 : Reported and Published by Order of the Convention.

New York: Printed by Wynkoop & Hallenbeck, 1868.

Ewing is a good example of the evolving nature of political affiliations, moving from a Free Soiler and Republican in his Kansas days to a Democrat by the time of this speech in 1868.

“Gentlemen, I do not understand how any white American, proud of our race and of our free systems of government, can behold, without mingled disgust and indignation the methods and results of Congressional reconstruction …

“What a spectacle for gods and men does not this reconstruction present! See the black laborers of the South, fed in idleness out of moneys wrung from the toil of Northern white men (applause), filled with ambition to rule the whites, and to grow rich by confiscations, and becoming each year more utterly and irreclaimably idle and thriftless. –p. 11

See a digital copy of Ewing's speech through the Library of Congress.

John F. McJunkin

John F. McJunkin Fourth of July address: autograph manuscript

[Iowa] 1872 July 4

8 leaves ; 32 x 20 cm

This Fourth of July speech was written by a Republican who served in the Iowa State Senate, and later as Iowa Attorney General. John F. McJunkin's manuscript was “prepared to be delivered at Crawfordsville, Iowa, July 4, 1872. Not delivered on account of sore throat.” Available here for the first time!

Purchase, 2019

A Centennial Fourth of July Democratic Celebration.  The Massacre of Six Colored Citizens of the United States at Hamburgh, S.C., on July 4, 1876

Washington?, 1876.

Account of an infamous riot between a white militia unit (known as “red shirts”) and Freedmen at a town formerly located in Edgefield District, S.C.; now located in Aiken County, S.C.  Along with the defeat in June, 1876, of General Custer’s 7^th Cavalry at the Little Big Horn (news of which reached the east coast by July 4, 1776), the Hamburg massacre illustrated that, though there was much to celebrate in the nation’s centennial year, there was also much unfinished business.