Happy 5th of July
A blog post by JMM Executive Director Marvin Pinkert. You can read more posts by Marvin here.
In today’s Museum Matters I wrote about the 5th of July as a reminder that the struggle for the idea of America did not end on the 4th, it had just begun.
Actually, if there really is a multiverse, in some alternative universe everyone in North America celebrates the 5th of July as the day we saved the Empire. For it is on July 5th, 1775 that John Dickinson persuades his fellow delegates to the Second Continental Congress to vote and sign the so-called “Olive Branch Petition”. The document claimed that we were all “faithful subjects” of the king and that all this trouble between the colonies and England could be easily solved with negotiations over lower taxes and restrictive tariffs (I know it’s hard to believe, but there was a time when many Americans thought that low taxes and protective trade were more important than freedom and independence).
In another universe, King George might have read the petition, decided that it wasn’t worth risking the loss of his valuable possessions over an argument about business, and sent a delegation to make a deal to keep all North Americans a part of the British Empire. In that universe, we would still salute the red, white and blue (just a different configuration).
However, in our universe, King George refused to even receive the petition. In August 1775 the King formally proclaims the colonies to be in rebellion – that’s a full eleven months before the colonies themselves agree that they are in rebellion.
But on behalf of that other universe, let me wish you a Felicitous Fifth.