For a century after Independence, Americans believed that their Revolution was still in progress. Nowhere was this clearer than on the Fourth of July, when Americans gathered for speeches that, as one orator put it in 1834, aimed to “examine the present, and to look forward to the future.” Nathan Perl-Rosenthal joins us to talk about this exploration, which he covers in his new book The Long Revolution: Creating a United States after 1776,, which mines thousands of Independence Day orations. In the words of local notables and national celebrities, men and women, white and Black, Perl-Rosenthal identifies contrasting visions, intense anxieties, and radical power the Revolution evoked deep into the nineteenth century. He has also created a map, July Fourth Orations, which shows where these thousands of events took place. This is a history of the American founding for today’s fragmented and anxious political moment, helping us find a usable past to guide us toward our own uncertain future.
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