Thoughts about the 1976 Bi-Centennial, inspired by reading David Frum’s discussion with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic.
In a 4th of July interview with David Frum, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic’s editor-in- chief, recalls our last significant national birthday. He reflects that he was just a kid in 1976. He mostly remembers going to see the tall ships in New York Harbor. A little older than Mr. Goldberg, I was just finishing graduate school then, so I remember 1976 in great detail.
I also recall everything that happened in 1974 to bring down the Nixon administration. The Watergate hearings. Sam Ervin, a politician for whom I would never have voted, telling John Erlichman why he interpreted a document the way he did: “Because I can understand the English language! It’s my mother tongue!” The Watergate burglar who made everyone laugh at the shenanigans of the burglars until they stopped laughing. Barry Goldwater, John Rhodes, and Hugh Scott going to the White House to tell Nixon it was over. Nixon resigned the next day. Goldwater, Rhodes, and Scott were also politicians for whom I would never have voted, but they were leaders who understood what leadership means.
One day later, Gerald Ford, another politician for whom I would never have voted, took the oath of office, becoming the 38th President of the United States. By happenstance, I was sitting in our car in front of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house in Concord, MA listening to the radio when that occurred. Emerson was, of course, one of our most eloquent spokesmen for the American idea. His poem “Concord Hymn,” begins this way:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.
That poem commemorates the battles of Lexington and Concord, celebrated as Patriot’s Day every April 19th in Massachusetts and Maine. Their very lives at risk, those farmers stood their ground. They didn’t run away.
Emerson lived and died in Concord which means “harmony,” a state of peacefulness. On August, 9, 1974, Gerald Ford began the difficult job of restoring harmony to our nation.
Two years later, on July 4th 1976, my husband and I headed to the National Mall in Washington to watch the fireworks. We parked at old RFK Stadium and bussed in because of the traffic. Despite traffic control efforts, it took hours for the busses to pick us up after the fireworks. We finally got home around 2 a.m. on July 5th.
I was worried about that because I had a major comprehensive exam scheduled for July 6th. That exam covered all early American literature in English from documents written by Captain John Smith through the Civil War and Reconstruction. It included the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.” I passed.
Fifty years later, I didn’t recall Daniel Webster’s role in the Compromise of 1850 until David Frum explained it. However, historian Heather Cox Richardson reminded me what Thomas Paine said in “Common Sense” about why we needed an American Constitution establishing a nation ruled by law, not by any one person. How did Paine know, 250 years ago, that we would need to be reminded about that now?
Our history remains instructive about the ideals on which our country was founded, what we have managed to get right and where we have fallen short over the years. Somehow, we have always pulled ourselves back from the abyss before. Now almost 80, I don’t know if I will live long enough to find out if we can do it again.
Are there still out there somewhere leaders, for whom I never would have voted, who will decide it is well past time for them to lead? Will some of them go to the White House to tell Trump it is over? Will someone, surely not J.D. Vance, someday take the oath of office while hopeful people sit in front of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house in Concord? Will those people remember the embattled farmers who stood and fired “the shot heard round the world”? After all that has happened, can a new leader bring us together and restore harmony to our nation?
I hope that this momentous birthday will be yet another new beginning. Perhaps, if we are lucky enough and determined enough, we can, as Abraham Lincoln said, bind up our nation’s wounds once again. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address looked backward to a military battle fought to save the union and to honor those who died for that cause. However, it also looked forward, giving every generation of Americans a mandate. It’s up to all of us to do what we can every day to preserve the union for which so many have died.
Lincoln urged us to “here highly resolve that (our) dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
We owe Lincoln and all those who sacrificed so much in that war and all the wars before and since our best effort to preserve our democracy.
Linda Cades
Easton
