{"id":202,"date":"2018-07-19T14:53:19","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T21:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/?page_id=202"},"modified":"2025-07-20T13:38:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T20:38:10","slug":"a-more-glorious-fourth-2012","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/a-more-glorious-fourth-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"A More Glorious Fourth (2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Uncle Sam ignores John Bull and celebrates American Independence with abandon. Seattle Times, 1913<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

My Seattle Times editorial column, which ran every other Wednesday, seldom fell on the Fourth of July, but in 2012 it did. Usually the month of July was down-time for public controversies, so I would write a column about history. In 2012 I wrote about fireworks in Seattle, 99 years before. It was also an oblique ode to an America, for all its problems, very much worth celebrating.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Today in Seattle, the only legal fireworks are institutional. Personal expression through gunpowder is forbidden. Says the city’s Web page, “Fireworks offenses are gross misdemeanors punishable by up to one year in jail and\/or a $5,000 fine.”<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Look through the\u00a0Seattle Times\u00a0<\/i>of a century ago and compare attitudes today with the Fourth of July then.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The city had rules about illegal fireworks. On July 4, 1906, Seattle’s chief of police, Charles Wappenstein, announced that the city would no longer tolerate the celebratory shooting of revolvers. Also forbidden, the news story said, were “giant crackers” or “the abominable canes in which bombs are exploded by knocking them against the pavement or the sides of buildings.”<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The chief went on to say that “the small boy, and the grown person, too, can have just as much fun and be just as patriotic in using small firecrackers, red fire, Roman candles, skyrockets, etc.”<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0People ignored fireworks laws then, as now. The\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/i>editorial page of July 4, 1912, referred to the actual Fourth as a booming that begins the day before and “continues until the ammunition is exhausted.”<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0People expected to have some pyrotechnic joy, and the newspaper celebrated that. On July 4, 1913, The\u00a0Times<\/i>ran a drawing of Uncle Sam carrying a firecracker the size of a rolled-up rug. Behind him, in the distance, John Bull yells over from England: “Remember, I’m in favor of a sane Fourth.” Sam laughs. He’s an American, and what real American would care what the English thought?<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0“The Fourth was a big, big deal in 1912,” says Lorraine McConaghy, historian at Seattle’s Museum of History & Industry. Independence Day was for outings, picnics, baseball and beer. Flags and bunting were everywhere. Men wore flags in lapels. The Bon March\u00e9 hung a great flag over Second Avenue.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The flag was important, and Americans were quick to defend it. On July 4, 1913, the top headline in the\u00a0<\/span>Times<\/span>was, “FLAG INSULTED IN CANADA!” The “insult” happened\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

when an American started waving Old Glory at a Canadian Army parade in Winnipeg, and spectators grabbed it and chucked it into the street.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On the same day, a crowd of patriots tore down and trampled the Mexican flag at the consulate in Tucson. The\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/i>had a small story on page 2 about that. It reported the consul demanding an apology from U.S. officials and not receiving one.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On the Fourth, officials were busy giving orations praising America and denouncing its enemies, then chiefly foreign-born anarchists and socialists. There were a lot of them; in the presidential election of 1912, 13 percent of Washington voters supported the Socialist, Eugene Debs. In 1913, assistant U.S. Attorney J.J. Sullivan told a crowd at Madison Park that the Wobblies, who were mainly anarchists, were against the flag and God, and should be deported.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We still have our anarchists, but nobody pays them attention unless they break windows, and then the alarm is about the window-breaking, not the doctrine. The flag incidents probably wouldn’t happen today.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0“There is a self-consciousness about Americans now about their place in the world that you don’t see in 1912,” McConaghy says. That’s an improvement.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Whether the ban on fireworks is an improvement I am not so sure. It has made the Fourth safer, but I remember those “giant crackers.” They were dangerous, and I loved them.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a9 2012\u00a0The Seattle Times<\/i><\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 This and similar stories had an influence on me. In 2013 historian Lorraine McConaghy, who is quoted here, asked me to join a project to read Washington newspapers published during the Civil War and make summaries for an historian\u2019s database.\u00a0<\/span><\/i>That work led directly to my retirement project, which was to research and write books of local economic and political history: The Panic of 1893 (Caxton, 2018) and Seattle in the Great Depression (WSU Press, 2025).<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Uncle Sam ignores John Bull and celebrates American Independence with abandon. Seattle Times, 1913 My Seattle Times editorial column, which ran every other Wednesday, seldom fell on the Fourth of July, but in 2012 it did. Usually the month of July was down-time for public controversies, so I would write a column about history. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-202","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1512,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/202\/revisions\/1512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}