Happy Dyscentennial, Everybody

"Centennial Mirror" by American Oleograph Co., 1876. From Library of Congress 

I don't have a cartoon for the U.S. semicentennial in 1826, which the nation celebrated by killing off John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, so let's start our Graphical History Tour of Multimodiennial July Fourths with this political cartoon from the centennial year of 1876.

"Donkeys at the Centennial" by Frank Bellew in Harper's Weekly, New York, July 1, 1876

There must have been more celebratory cartoons about the U.S. turning 100, but Harper's Weekly's sole contribution that week was all about Democrats criticizing, I believe, the Centennial International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine. President Ulysses S. Grant opened the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia on May 10, 1876, where it ran for the next six months.

U.S. exhibits included entries from 21 states on all topics covered by its official name, as well as on Native American heritage and the rights (such as they were) of women and the abolition of slavery. That last exhibit must have rankled southern Democrats and their sympathizers in the North.

If that wasn't the inspiration for Frank Bellew's cartoon, perhaps it had to do with Edward Mitchell Bannister's painting Under the Oaks, which was awarded first prize at the Exhibition until he arrived to accept the honor and the judges discovered that Bannister was Black. Only vehement protest by Bannister's fellow artists kept the judges from revoking their decision.

"The Centennial Transfer" in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, New York, May 17, 1876

This cartoon from a critic of Grant's Republican administration probably took some of its inspiration from scandals in the Interior and War Departments exposed by investigations conducted by the Democratic majority in the House. 

General Joseph R. Hawley, a Republican politician from Connecticut, was president of the United States Centennial Commission. John Welsh was the president of the Centennial Board of Finance. In the cartoon, Welsh and Hawley present President Grant with the Centennial Exhibition building, and the insinuation is that Grant was not in control of graft and fraud in his cabinet.

The cartoon bore no signature, so I can't be certain whether it was the work of  Matt Morgan, Joseph Keppler, or some other Leslie's cartoonist.

1926

"Onward the Nation Goes Conquering the Heights" by Gustavo Bronstrup in San Francisco Chronicle, July 5, 1926

A while back, our Graphical History Tour observed the rise and fall of Miss Columbia as a symbol of the United States. She was still around to celebrate the nation's sesquicentennial in 1926, at least on the drawing boards of cartoonists old enough to remember the centennial.

As in 1876, the nation's premier party was in Philadelphia, hosting a World's Fair from May 31 to November 30. Controversy — including lawsuits and fines levied against workers — arose from having the fair open on July 4, because it was a Sunday: Sabbath laws forbade non-essential business from operating on the Lord's Day.

The Sesquicentennial International Exposition opened anyway.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted "That the sesquicentennial of our independence should fall on a Sunday adds to the impressiveness of the anniversary. This holiday will doubtless be not only safe and sane, but more than usually solemn. A degree of solemnity will not be out of place... "

"The Forty-Eight Stars of Liberty" by Wm. A. Rogers in Washington Post, July 4, 1926

John Adams had written that Independence Day (by which he meant July 2) should be commemorated "by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty..."

"Ding" Darling, however, who was born in 1876, predicted that not everybody would appreciate a degree of solemnity just because the Fourth fell on the Lord's Day in his fiftieth year.

"Celebrating the Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness..." by J.N. "Ding" Darling in Des Moines Register, July 4, 1926

Of course, John Adams also called for "pomp and parades, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from time forward forevermore."

Boys — and occasionally men — celebrating life, liberty, and the pursuit of bodily injury with  firecrackers was a longstanding staple of Independence Day editorial cartoons. So we'll let Mr. Darling's entry stand for all the other cherry bomb toons for this particular year.

"Quite a Husky Kid for His Age" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. July 3, 1926

The United States often thought of itself, and been regarded by the major European powers, as a youngster among nations. By 1926, however, there were younger eastern European and near Asian countries that emerged from the rubble of World War I. 

One could interpret Dorman Smith's cartoon to suggest that the U.S. was starting to get too big for its britches; maybe he was hinting that it was time for the kid to graduate into some big boy pants.

"There's a Tie That Binds Us Still" by J.P. Alley in Commercial Appeal, Memphis, July 4, 1926

If Dorman Smith had Mother Earth happy for America's birthday, J.P. Alley focuses on one foreign nation, citing the improvement in American relations with our erstwhile colonial master since our break-up. 

Editorial cartoonists being a rather cantankerous sort, there were some political jabs on certain editorial pages that July 4.

Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 4, 1926

Okay, just one more cartoon of things going bang bang. Nelson Harding brings up congressional hearings on the millions of dollars being poured into primary election races for statehouse and the U.S. Senate that spring. 

The other night, I heard Ali Velshi state that the fight to control campaign spending has been going on for half a century. This cartoon demonstrates that the fight has been going on at least twice as long.

"Re-Declaring Our Independence" by O.C. Chopin in San Francisco Examiner, July 5, 1926

Oscar Chopin used the holiday to reiterate his faith in isolationism, shared by many Republicans and the Hearst newspapers for which he drew.

This cartoon looks an awful lot like the template used for a cartoon of his we visited four years ago.

"The Sesqui Centennial in Cartoons" by Marvin P. "Hay" Bales in Daily Worker, Chicago, July 3, 1926

Communist labor cartoonist Hay Bales offered this sour history of the United States for the nation's sesquicentennial.

In his telling, the North won the Civil War because of its advantage in industrial and financial capital, resulting in a centralized federal government. He termed the Spanish-American War "the first military move of the U.S. in the field of imperialist conquest" (Mexico and Native American nations might beg to differ); he attributed U.S. entry into World War I to the same motivation.

1976

by Ranan Lurie for Los Angeles Times, ca. July 3, 1976

Jumping ahead another fifty years, Miss Columbia had been replaced on American drawing boards by the Statue of Liberty (a trend already begun by 1926).

by Tony Auth in Philadelphia Inquirer, July 4, 1976

The U.S. Bicentennial was greeted with an explosion of clip art, per Tony Auth and Frank Interlandi.

"Happy Birthday, America" by Frank Interlandi in Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1976

As well as explosions of the pyrotechnical ooh and ahh variety.

"I Hope They Know How Lucky They Are" by Douglas Borgstedt for Copley News Service, July 4, 1976

Douglas Borgstedt used the holiday to highlight the difference in liberty in the United States and in the Eastern Bloc nations controlled by Moscow.

by Dwayne Powell in Raleigh Times & Observer, July 4, 1976

May I say that it's nice to see that, with all these cartoons starring George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Miss Columbia, Uncle Sam, Lady Liberty, and the Bald Eagle, someone finally remembered to give Thomas Jefferson some credit for the Declaration of Independence.

Incidentally, you may have noticed the absence from these cartoons from 1926 and 1976 of the president in office at the time. Hay Bales included Woodrow Wilson in his sesquicentennial cartoon, but the man had been dead for two years, and was no hero of the radical movement besides. 

But while Ulysses S. Grant, Calvin Coolidge, and Gerald Ford certainly participated in special Independence Day celebrations, they in no way turned them into spectacles of personal self-aggrandizement.

Those of us who experienced the Bicentennial have regrets that the spirit of coming together in celebration then is not what we are witnessing now. To a certain extent, that's because we were young then and now we're not. A recent Christian Science Monitor column, "Can a Divided U.S. Celebrate Its 250th Together?" tried to sum up the tenor of the time:

Back then, the nation also felt fractious, stressed, and war-weary, says Marc Stein, a historian at San Francisco State University and author of “Bicentennial: A Revolutionary History of the 1970s.” Crime was up. Energy prices were high. New York City, the flotilla’s host, had become a byword for urban dysfunction and debt. Some questioned whether it was even safe for Operation Sail.

President Gerald Ford, who had assumed office in 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate, was among those who “hoped to use the bicentennial to ‘turn the page’ and ‘begin a new chapter’ with a patriotic and unifying celebration,” says Professor Stein via email. They largely succeeded, and many still remember the parties and parades held across the country.

"When in the Course of Current Events" by Paul Conrad in Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1976

Let's not pretend, however, that the Bicentennial occurred during an unadulterated Era of Good Feeling. If there were editorial cartoons to spoil the party in 1926, there were a few of the same in 1976. Paul Conrad pointed out that there were still Americans seeking a "more perfect union": immigrant workers, laborers, women, Blacks, and Native Americans.

"Birthday Hangover" by Frank in Pittsburgh Courier, July 10, 1976

This cartoonist enumerated a number of Black Americans' complaints in the aftermath of the Bicentennial, including our since forgotten backing of an anticommunist militia battling for control of Angola after its independence from Portugal in 1975, and governmental tolerance of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Conservatives found reason to grouse, too:

Eugene Payne on WSOC-TV, Charlotte NC, ca. July, 1976

I'm guessing that Eugene Payne's cartoon was in color on TV, but unfortunately, I don't have a screenshot of it.

Jerry Falwell had not yet founded his Moral Majority political action machine, but a backlash was growing against the trend toward permissiveness, civil liberties, and pluralism of the previous decade. In a few years, it would gel into a partisan force empowering the Republican Party, even after its preachers were exposed as hypocrites for their enthusiastic support of the present completely amoral GOP standard bearer.

But that's a topic for...

2026

"American Colosseum" by Howard McWilliam in The Week, June 12, 2026

I won't be surprised to see a few celebratory editorial cartoons show up today, but I think the sub-head on this recent cover of The Week accurately sums up how most of us feel about the nation's semiquincentennial. Joel Pett had a cartoon this week that expresses my sentiments perfectly.

It's not just us woke liberal dummocrats, either; The Week's June 12 edition paraphrases some conservatives' opinions:

"America's 250th birthday party 'won't be much of a celebration at all.'" ― Jeffrey Blehar, National Review

"Gladiatorial combat is just one way Trump has turned our national birthday into 'a royalist celebration of himself.'... Trump has 'made a pitiful shambles of what should have been a glorious moment.'" ― David Frum, The Atlantic

"Rather than be demoralized by Trump's effort to hijack our holiday, we can view this July 4 as an opportunity for a renewed dedication to the real meaning of Independence Day. We can look away from Trump's sad simulacrum of kingly spectacles in Washington, D.C." ―William Kristol, The Bulwark

2076

To those of you who will be around to celebrate the Tricentennial: first of all, I hope that there is one. I hope that it finds you during more harmonious times.

Mind you, "more harmonious," like "a more perfect union," is in the eye of the beholder.