“As early as 1805, you had orators getting up there — barely twenty years after American independence was recognised by Great Britain — saying: the Republic is over. We’ve had it. So there is a tradition of calling it the end times.” — Nathan Perl-Rosenthal
It’s less than three weeks until America’s big birthday bash. But what exactly will be celebrated this 250th Independence Day? In The Long Revolution: Creating a United States After 1776, the historian Nathan Perl-Rosenthal read some 2,500 July 4 orations delivered in the hundred years after independence. And what he found is that most Americans didn’t believe that the revolution was really over.
Orators often unfavourably compared the American Revolution to the French, Spanish American, and European revolutions of 1830 and 1848. They argued bitterly about slavery. As late as the 1870s, leading orators were insisting that the revolution was unfinished because the truths of the Declaration of Independence had not yet been fully worked out.
Fast forward to 2026 and Perl-Rosenthal suggests a return to the kind of sustained public dialogue that the oratorical tradition once represented. So put down your smartphones on July 4 and tell the world where America currently is and where it should go. The act of oration, Perl-Rosenthal suggests, is not just a civic act, but essential to the country’s long revolutionary tradition. So happy birthday America. And many many more.
Five Takeaways
• 100,000 Orations: The Archive Nobody Knew About: In the first century after independence, an estimated 100,000 July 4 orations were delivered across the United States — roughly a thousand towns and villages, each holding an annual address for a hundred years. Of those, 2,500 survive in published form as pamphlets, now collected in a digital database at fourthofjulyorations.org. These are not peripheral documents. They were delivered by the most prominent public figures of their day — lawyers, clergymen, politicians — before large audiences. They are among the richest sources we have for what ordinary Americans actually thought about their revolution and their republic.
• The Revolution Was Ongoing: Most Orators Believed This Well Into the 1870s: The single most striking finding of Perl-Rosenthal’s research: most orators, deep into the nineteenth century, did not regard the revolution as a completed historical event. They saw themselves not as commemorating it but as participating in it. As late as the 1870s, leading orators were insisting the revolution remained unfinished. One orator in Boston in 1870, in a debate about immigration policy and Chinese exclusion, argued that the revolution could not be over because the inalienable rights proclaimed in the Declaration had not yet been universally extended. The parallel to the immigration debates of 2026 is, Perl-Rosenthal suggests, striking.
• The Orations Were Critical, Not Triumphalist: Perl-Rosenthal went into the archive expecting, as he puts it, “rah America.” He found something quite different. Many orators compared the American Revolution unfavourably to other revolutions: to the French in the 1790s, to Spanish American revolutions in the 1810s and 1820s, to the European revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The comparisons often did not flatter America. Wealthy Bostonians giving the prestigious Boston oration — one of the oldest and most prominent in the country — would argue explicitly that the founders had failed to deal with slavery. The critical tradition was mainstream, not marginal.
• 1876 as the Turning Point: When the Tradition Died: The July 4 oration tradition effectively ended after 1876. That year, Congress for the first time asked towns and cities to deliver historical rather than political orations — accounts of local history rather than arguments about the present. A tenfold increase in orations was followed by a rapid collapse of the tradition. The shift was significant: from argument to commemoration, from an ongoing political conversation to a museum piece. The practice of serious sustained public political dialogue — an hour or more, in public, about the state of the republic — has not recovered.
• A Low, Dishonest Period: What the Tradition Offers Now: Mark Lilla’s blurb: “a low, dishonest period in our history. This surprisingly timely book reminds us of our responsibilities.” Perl-Rosenthal is not catastrophist about the current moment — he notes that orators were calling it the end times as early as 1805. But he is clear about what is missing: a forum for sustained public argument about where America is and where it should go. The smartphone generation, he acknowledges, is unlikely to sit through an hour-long oration. That, he suggests, is precisely the problem.
About the Guest
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal is a professor of history, French and Italian, and law at the University of Southern California. He has been a fellow at Harvard and Cambridge. He is the author of The Long Revolution: Creating a United States After 1776 (Basic Books, June 2, 2026), Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution (Belknap/Harvard), and The Age of Revolutions. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Nation, and the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Los Angeles and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
References:
• The Long Revolution: Creating a United States After 1776 by Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (Basic Books, June 2, 2026).
• fourthofjulyorations.org — the digital database of 2,500 published July 4 orations referenced throughout.
• Eric Foner — Perl-Rosenthal’s dissertation adviser at Columbia, referenced as still giving July 4 orations in his Connecticut town.
• Mark Lilla — referenced for his blurb: “a low, dishonest period in our history. This surprisingly timely book reminds us of our responsibilities.”
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
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