As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the meaning of its founding narrative is increasingly contested.
The traditional pillars of that story—freedom, democracy, and progress—have come under strain amid growing wealth inequality, civil rights setbacks, and unpopular wars.
Writing during World War I, intellectual Randolph Bourne described the American revolutionary inheritance as a “squalid marriage between the town capitalist and plantation patriarch.”
He argued that glittering generalities about freedom and democracy were marked by their captivity to money counters and owners of human chattel.
Today, with Donald Trump as a leading political figure, Bourne’s critique resonates.
The mobilization of market frenzy, war machinery, deportation campaigns, and nativist passions define an era of social fracture and moral failure.
The US origin story will be retold with fanfare, dressed in Christian nationalism and militarism, but drained of its world-making power—the idea that “the cause of America is the cause of all mankind,” as Thomas Paine wrote in 1776.
From Universalist Narrative to Fractured Consensus
Not long ago, the redemptive idea of America still resonated.
On his election night in 2008, Barack Obama framed his victory as narrowing the gap between democratic ideals and flawed reality.
He celebrated ordinary people as authors of “our better history,” linking women’s suffrage, the New Deal, civil rights, and marriage equality in a continuous march toward a “more perfect union.”
That universalist narrative emerged during World War II, advancing anti-fascist and anti-racist claims that gained sway even among conservative elites.
In the post-war era, US history was defined as a series of emancipatory milestones that vindicated domestic order and global leadership.
Recent years have seen growing detractors from this consensus.
The New York Times’ 1619 Project offered an account of a “new founding,” arguing that the Revolutionary War was primarily motivated by preserving slavery.
Conservatives howled, and historians debated whether the nation’s birth was best understood through the heritage of slavery or anti-slavery.
But both sides largely overlooked that land hunger and westward expansion were major revolutionary impulses.
Emancipation and expansion are twin pillars of the American revolutionary narrative, closely bound to slavery, freedom, frontiers, and global reach.
Today, the idea of a virtuous expansionist-emancipatory dialectic has fallen on hard times, undone by wealth inequality, civil rights reversals, violent policing, and unpopular wars.
Historical Reckonings and the Fourth of July
Frederick Douglass asked in 1852, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
At that time, the Fugitive Slave Act meant free states could no longer offer sanctuary.
The Dred Scott decision in 1857 answered that Africans and their descendants could never be citizens.
It took a bloody civil war to achieve an affirmative answer for slavery’s descendants, and another century for substantive political and civil rights—ambivalence that persists.
The 1619 Project demonstrated that the established synthesis of nationalist and progressive history is broken. The meaning of the American founding is now firmly up for grabs.
Historical Fourth of July celebrations show a propensity for evasion. The 1876 centennial barely mentioned slavery, focusing on industrial might and expansion.
The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, amid segregation and imperial adventurism, affirmed that narrative.
Historian Frederick Jackson Turner described western frontiers as the motor of democratic expansion, dismissing slavery as an “incident.”
US entry into World War II marked a reconsideration.
Arthur Schlesinger’s 1945 book “The Age of Jackson” framed Andrew Jackson as a populist hero, comparing his extension of the franchise to white men without property to New Deal struggles.
This overlooked Jackson’s suppression of anti-slavery struggles, support for Indian removal, and hostility to women’s suffrage.
Nevertheless, the idea that the Declaration of Independence was a mandate for insurgencies from below was far-reaching.
In 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence quoting the Declaration, and later appealed to the US for support—met with silence.
The 1976 bicentennial reverted to plantation nostalgia and commemorative kitsch. A tall-ship parade and a “freedom train” sponsored by corporations crisscrossed the country.
In Philadelphia, a counter-celebration by Black, Latino, and Native American organizers demanded a “bicentennial without colonies.”
Meanwhile, a young Donald Trump was emerging as the avatar of Bourne’s town capitalist. Ronald Reagan later rose with frontier-expansionist themes.
With Trump in the White House, the upcoming anniversary will likely showcase paeans to pioneer spirit, military power, and business civilization, perhaps with plantation nostalgia.
Andrew Jackson’s plantation plans a celebration with 1,776 US flags, and a restored Reconciliation Monument at Arlington will provide a backdrop.
Jackson will be celebrated as empowering the common man, not for expanding slavery or authorizing Indian removal.
As Ho Chi Minh and other anti-colonial leaders discovered, not every insurgency is created equal.
