Independence Day, 2024: America and Context, a Short Ramble

“A False Alarm on the Fourth” Udo Keppler, Puck. (1902)
“Uncle Sam — It’s all right! There’s no fighting!
The noise you hear is just my family celebrating!”

I like that double-page cartoon by Udo Keppler. And I like his image of America: a family of sorts, where everybody doesn’t look just like me, but we can celebrate together anyway.

Another Udo Keppler cartoon, made eight years earlier, shows a different attitude. I’ll get back to that.

I’ll also be quoting John Adams, with a little the quotes’ context.

• Declaration of Independence: 248 Years Ago Today
• Flights of Oratory, Compromise, and a Missed Opportunity
• “…Our Pleasing Hopes…” and a Persistent Perception
• Being a Good Citizen AND a Catholic
• A “Patriot Dream That Sees Beyond the Years”

Declaration of Independence: 248 Years Ago Today

Formerly-loyal English subjects signed the Declaration of Independence on this date on July 4, 1776. That’s what Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin said, at any rate.¹

I gather that “most” historians say they didn’t — that the document was signed about two months later. Why that’s so, I don’t know. I’m just glad that “most” historians aren’t trying to believe that the Declaration of Independence was part of a MAGA plot to pollute the Potomac.

I’d better clarify a few things.

First, I don’t think that history is either useless, or a pack of lies made up by folks who don’t agree with me. By academic training, I’m an historian: and wish that more professional historians would remember that today’s academic fashions are just that: fashions.

Second, as a slogan, I think MAGA — Make American Great Again — is silly. As I see it, America never stopped being great. My kids told me that the slogan is a response to a still-fashionable ‘blame America first’ attitude. They’ve got a point, and I think they’re right.

Third, I think America is great. And that my country isn’t perfect. That was true when we got started, and still is.

Flights of Oratory, Compromise, and a Missed Opportunity

I haven’t heard the “you can’t legislate morality” slogan for quite a while.

There’s some truth in it. Making, say, pick-pocketing illegal won’t keep some folks from pick-pocketing. But we criminalize pick-pocketing anyway.

Then there’s slavery. It’s a bad idea and we shouldn’t do it. Ever. Even if it’s legal. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1903, 1950-1960, 2242, 2414, and more)

It’d have been nice if the Declaration of Independence made the abolition of slavery a founding principle for the new country.

That didn’t happen. But it might have, if an early draft hadn’t rubbed too many folks the wrong way.

“…A meeting we accordingly had, and conn’d the paper [the Declaration of Independence] over. I was delighted with its high tone and the flights of oratory with which it abounded, especially that concerning negro slavery, which, though I knew his Southern brethren would never suffer to pass in Congress, I certainly never would oppose. There were other expressions which I would not have inserted, if I had drawn it up, particularly that which called the King tyrant. I thought this too personal; for I never believed George to be a tyrant in disposition and in nature…”
(John Adams to Timothy Pickering (August 6, 1822) via monticello.org) [emphasis mine]

“…Our Pleasing Hopes…” and a Persistent Perception

The Declaration of Independence, minus some of the “flights of oratory”, got signed.

Decades later, John Adams wasn’t happy about the continuing imperfections in his still-new country.

And he apparently saw problems in other countries, where “a free government” was dealing with “the Roman Catholic religion”.

“Must we, before we take our departure from this grand and beautiful world, surrender all our pleasing hopes of the progress of society, of the improvement of the intellect and moral condition of the world, of the reformation of mankind?

“The Piedmontese revolution scarcely assumed a form, and the Neapolitan bubble is burst. And what should hinder the Spanish and Portuguese constitutions from running to the same ruin? The Cortes is in one assembly vested with the legislative power. The king and his priests, armies, navies, and all other officers, are vested with the executive authority of government. Are not here two authorities up, neither supreme? Are they not necessarily rivals, constantly contending, like law, physic, and divinity, for superiority? Just ready for civil war?

“Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion? The art of lawgiving is not so easy as that of architecture or painting. New York and Rhode Island are struggling for conventions to reform their constitutions, and I am told there is danger of making them worse. Massachusetts has had her convention; but our sovereign lords, the people, think themselves wiser than their representatives, and in several articles I agree with their lordships. Yet there never was a cooler, a more patient, candid, or a wiser deliberative body than that convention….”
(John Adams to Thomas Jefferson (May 19, 1821) via National Humanities Center) [emphasis mine]

I’m pretty sure that the “Piedmontese revolution” Adams mentioned was connected with the Piedmontese Republic, something that happened when the French Revolution and Napoleon hit Turin’s neighborhood.

I could let myself get upset that one of America’s founders wondered: “Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?” But I won’t.

Instead, I’ll be happy about my country’s occasionally-grudging tolerance for us.

Besides, John Adams grew up in 18th century New England, was the great-great-grandson of an immigrant from England, and saw the world through English-American eyes.²

I grew up in 20th century Minnesota. I’m the grandson of an Irish-American, the son of a Norwegian-American — the short, black-haired kind, not those blond giants — and see the world through the eyes of someone who spent his youth in the 1960s.

Expecting John Adams to have attitudes and perceptions like mine isn’t reasonable.

“…The relationship between the Catholic Church and the various political powers of the last two millennia is thorny, to say the least. Over the next few days, I will make a few observations on this important issue for provocation, conversation, and, hopefully, clarification….”
(“Rick Santorum and the Kingship of Christ, Part One“, William Edmund Fahe, Crisis Magazine (March 5, 2012)) [emphasis mine]

“…thorny, to say the least….” I’ll leave it at that. For today.

Being a Good Citizen AND a Catholic

“Print shows Cardinal ‘Satolli’ holding a crosier, sitting atop an enormous dome labeled ‘American Headquarters’, and casting a large shadow in the shape of Pope Leo XIII across the landscape of the United States, from New York City south through Washington, D.C. to the Gulf of Mexico, and west to San Francisco….”
(“The American pope / Keppler“, (1894) Summary, Library of Congress)

I can see why ‘regular Americans’ would be suspicious of Cardinal Francesco Satolli and Pope Leo XIII.

They were both Italians and Catholics, which made Satolli a foreign agent in league with an international organization which was — well, not American.

Fear of foreign influence was still in play when Reverend Branford Clarke drew that “SHALL HE BE ALLOWED TO RULE AMERICA?” cartoon in 1943.

I’ll be pleased if we get through this election year without someone whipping up fears of a Catholic conspiracy. Or calling for left and and right to unite in common cause against Popish plots. The slogans would be different these days, of course.

Now, individual Catholics can be just as bonkers as anyone else.

But those of us who understand the basics of our faith, and take them seriously, must contribute to “…the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom….” (Catechism, 2239)

I’ve talked about that before, and probably will again.³

A “Patriot Dream That Sees Beyond the Years”

John Adams didn’t live to see it, but slavery is no longer legal in America. I think that’s a good thing.

Some other long-overdue corrections were getting attention during my youth. Now, a couple decades into the 21st century, America still isn’t perfect.

But I think many of us have a “patriot dream” of an America that’s less flawed than the one we’re living in. I think that’s something to remember and work toward.

“…O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!…”
(“America the Beautiful,” Katharine Lee Bates, 1911 version, via Wikipedia)

I’ve talked about that before, too:

• “Independence Day: Freedom, Citizenship and Looking Ahead”
  (July 4, 2023)
• “Climate, Neighbors, Bogeymen and Responsibility”
  (November 5, 2022)
• “Independence Day: America and Acting Like Love Matters”
  (July 4, 2022)
• “Alabaster Cities, Fireworks, a Condo Disaster and Tears”
  (July 3, 2021)
• “Police, I-35W Bridge Collapse and All That”
  (February 5, 2021)

¹ Today’s celebration:

• Wikipedia
  • Independence Day (United States)

² Background, mostly the 18th century:

• Wikipedia
  • Age of Enlightenment (17th-18th centuries)
  • French First Republic (1792-1804)
  • French Revolution (1789)
  • John Adams
  • New England
  • Piedmontese Republic (1798-1799)
  • Proclamation of the abolition of the monarchy (1792)
  • Reign of Terror (September 5, 1793 – July 27, 1794)

³ Being Catholic and American, and a little background:

• Wikipedia
  • Anti-Catholicism in the United States
  • Francesco Satolli
  • McCarthyism (1947-1959, AKA Second Red Scare)
  • Pope Leo XIII
  • Popish Plot (1678-1681, an English analog to America’s McCarthyism)
• I’m a Catholic, so being a good citizen is an obligation
  • “Venice Biennale Holy See Pavilion: Art and Cities of Refuge” (May 4, 2024)
    • Loving America Anyway
    • Living in Isaiah’s World