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When I Was at the Bicentennial

When I Was at the Bicentennial

Last updated on: July 2, 2026 at 6:55 am by Gene Veith

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When I Was at the Bicentennial 2026-07-02T06:55:06-04:00 Gene Veith

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Celebrating America’s anniversary in the shadow of an unpopular president, an unnecessary and humiliating war, and an economy that hits ordinary people with both stagnation and inflation.

Oh, wait–I’m not talking about today! I’m referring to 1976! America’s Bicentennial, in the aftermath of Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and President Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” initiative! Those problems were worse and more depressing than what we are struggling with today.

And yet the whole nation came together with gusto to celebrate the Bicentennial, lightening our national mood considerably.

I know because I was there. I happened to be on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on July 4, 1976. I didn’t plan to be there. It just sort of happened. (How could that have been 50 years ago?)

Let me indulge in a little autobiography, telling about a trip that involved the Bicentennial, but also much more.

I was a graduate student studying English at the University of Kansas. One of the professors at KU was a towering Shakespeare scholar named Charlton Hinman, the inventor of the Hinman Collator, which revolutionized the study of early printed texts, and the editor of the Facsimile of Shakespeare’s First Folio. Prof. Hinman had retired by the time I came to KU, but his wife, Myra Hinman, was also a faculty member, and she became my advisor for my Master’s Thesis on Renaissance revenge tragedies.

The Hinmans decided to move to Washington, D.C., so that they would have access to the Folger Shakespeare Library, the massive collection of Shakespeare material housed in a beautiful neo-classical building located one block from the Capitol Building and right next to the Library of Congress.

They bought a house, a moving van took their stuff, they took off, but they needed someone to drive their second car. Eager, loyal, helpful grad student that I was, I volunteered. Our arrangement was that I would set out once they were somewhat settled and I would stay with them for a week. While there, they would arrange for me Reading Room privileges at the Folger, where I could do some research for my thesis.

So I drove cross-country from Lawrence, Kansas, to Washington, D.C. I was in awe at our nation’s capital. Studying at the Folger was exhilarating. At KU I was also working, for pay, with Professor Edward Grier, helping him edit Walt Whitman’s unpublished prose manuscripts (that is, his journals and notes) Prof. Grier asked me to check some of our photocopies against the originals, which are kept in the Library of Congress, so he arranged for me to have access with the library’s manuscript collection. This was an even bigger thrill for me.

For example, on one scrap of paper I examined, Whitman wrote something on the order of this: “To one reading this a hundred years hence: As you are now, so I was. As I am now, so you shall be.” Chills! A great poet in the 1870s writing to me directly in the 1970s! A reminder that back then, he was a conscious human being writing on a piece of paper, just as I am a conscious human being reading that same piece of paper. And that just as he has died and passed away into history, I will die and pass away into history. (I have later learned that this was an epitaph with roots in ancient Rome and was an especially popular inscription on grave stones in the 19th century cemeteries that the eccentric Whitman liked to hang around in. But still–that doesn’t take away from its impact on me.)

While I was there, Prof. Hinman asked me to help him go through his own papers. He had me skim through the journal he wrote when he was a student at Oxford. It turns out, he studied under C. S. Lewis! Prof. Hinman told me that Lewis was the best lecturer he had ever heard. As I was reading his journal, the young grad student–probably about my age–said that what he was learning from Lewis and Ronald Knox, the Catholic chaplain at Oxford who was also a noted apologist, made him almost convinced of the truth of Christianity. And yet, he said, if he became a Christian, he would have to give up his sexual relationship with a girl he was seeing. Which taught me that the ultimate reason for unbelief is not so much intellectual lack of conviction as sin!

The 4th of July, 1976, was on a Sunday. This time, my daily trek to the libraries on Capitol Hill, which were closed on that day, took me to the National Mall, the huge park that extends from the Capitol building to the Washington Monument, bordered by the incomparable Smithsonian museums. I was one of what I later learned were 500,000 Americans (growing to a million for the fireworks) gathered there to celebrate the 200th birthday of the United States of America.

Also on the Mall was the American Folklife exhibit, with displays and booths and performances from all of the regions and ethnic groups that comprise the great American melting pot. I was too far away to even see the stage, but I could hear Johnny Cash singing his heart out. He was the grand marshal of the parade, which I didn’t see, but I later learned that he didn’t perform on that day. Rather, his songs were playing on the speaker system. (I just learned that while researching this post. Darn it! I had counted Johnny Cash as one of the musical artists that I had heard (if not seen) in person, but now I’ll have to strike him off my list!)

There were so many different people and kinds of people there for the Bicentennial. Folklife performers in their ethnic dress, representatives of Native American tribes, Moral Majority types, Goldwater Republicans, New Deal Democrats, and a large contingent of protesters. The Vietnam War had ended the previous year, but the remnants of the antiwar movement staged what they called the People’s Bicentennial protesting the evils that remained. I walked through their encampment, and, despite their anti-government, anti-corporation slogans, it seemed like even they were caught up in the spirit of the day.

The protesters claimed the legacy of the Declaration of Independence (its promise of equality and freedom that they claimed has not been fully realized yet) and the Moral Majority claimed the legacy of the Declaration of Independence (the part about our rights being endowed by our Creator and the unalienable right to life). The protesters and the Moral Majority were very different from each other ideologically and politically, but they shared the same national ideals. The same national document.

Not so much any more. The left dismisses Thomas Jefferson and other American founders as hypocrites for clamoring for liberty while owning slaves, and denigrates the Declaration of Independence as a lie. Rather than recognizing that the ideals of the founders can be valid, even if they did not live up to them. And that the Declaration of Independence, as Martin Luther King described it, is “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”

On the right too we are seeing a turning against “liberal” democracy as an Enlightenment innovation. Some people who consider themselves conservatives are uninterested in conserving America’s heritage and institutions. Some are calling for a “Caesar,” a strong man to seize control and save us. As we posted yesterday, some are calling for a monarchy or a “confessional state,” whether Catholic, Calvinist, or Pentecostal.

But America is worth conserving. It is worth passing on to future generations. Let’s celebrate the 250th anniversary and hold on for the Tricentennial.

Back to the Bicentennial, after the biggest fireworks display I had ever seen, I made my way back to the Hinman’s place. That week 50 years ago had a big impact on me, not just on my view of America, but also on my future vocation as a scholar and on my faith, about which I had been getting more and more serious. And on my family vocations. While I was in D.C., I called to check in with my wife in Kansas. She told me that we were going to have a baby! That sent my mind, already blown from what I had been experiencing, reeling even more, putting everything else in yet another perspective.

Photo: Bicentennial Crowd by Washington Monument via D.C. Public Library, In Copyright – Non-Commercial Use Permitted. http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/

America's 250th birthday

America's Bicentennial

Gene Veith biography

The Seventies

Walt Whitman

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How the U.S.A. Could Come to an End

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July 3, 2026 America at 250

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