Happy Independence Day Weekend! Along with the festivities, why not take the opportunity to make remembering some history fun for the kids? One of the keys to the popularity of the clearly incompetent socialist mayoral candidate in NYC seems to be that he smiles a lot.
We can do better than this with young people. And older people, for that matter.
History of Independence Day
Following are some pieces to read and share so we can keep things in perspective during these crazy times. Most of them were accessed through Powerline:
From City Journal. Remembering to share family stories, including stories of experiences in foreign lands
Celebrating Independence From Anti-American History Propaganda
The end of the 1619 Project?
That would be great, wouldn't it?
What, to the New York Times, Is the Fourth of July?
No institution has worked harder in recent years to destroy the narrative of America’s founding than the New York Times, whose 1619 Project reimagined the experiment in republican self-government as a grand scheme to institute and perpetuate slavery. James Piereson calls their bluff, and examines the contradictions of the destructive Left’s founding myth.
A Real Live Niece of Uncle Sam
An organization supporting the history of Mount Vernon
How to Celebrate the Past
Claremont School Board President William B. Allen uses the Fourth of July as an occasion for reflection on the Founding principles of this nation.
Following a fading tradition, Claremont School Board President William B. Allen uses the Fourth of July as an occasion for reflection on the Founding principles of this nation. His address raises issues concerning the schools and civic education which the recent, well-publicized education studies have virtually ignored.
This contribution inaugurates a new section of the Review which will feature essays, interviews, and reviews of particular interest to students, professors, and other residents of Claremont.
For the more studious of your acquaintances, I guess. Did you know there was once a Forefathers Day?
Resources from Wilfred M. McClay
We must work to understand the Declaration better and to grasp the various sources of its strength and enduring appeal.
Thomas Jefferson was not a particularly modest man. Few great and world-changing public figures are. But in a famous letter of 1825 to Henry Lee, he insisted upon taking a modest approach to his role as the principal draftsman of the document that has come to characterize the heart and soul of the American Revolution: the Declaration of Independence. He could have claimed brilliant originality for himself. He could have complained, as he had on other occasions, about the fact that the drafting committee altered his brilliant original draft in ways of which he disapproved. But he chose not to do so in this instance. The passage in question deserves to be quoted at length, as the best account we have of his considered view of the matter:
…with respect to our rights and the acts of the British government contravening those rights, there was but one opinion on this side of the water. all American whigs thought alike on these subjects. when forced therefore to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. this was the object of the Declaration of Independance. not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject; [. . .] terms so plain and firm, as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independant stand we [. . .] compelled to take. neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the american mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. all it’s authority rests then on the harmonising sentiments of the day, whether expressed, in conversns in letters, printed essays or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney Etc. the historical documents which you mention as in your possession, ought all to be found, and I am persuaded you will find, to be corroborative of the facts and principles advanced in that Declaration. (my emphasis added)
There is much more. Perhaps the story is not as simple as we thought it was.
The eternal meaning of Independence Day (Scott Johnson)
On July 9, 1858, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas gave a campaign speech to a raucous throng from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln was in the audience as Douglas prepared to speak. Douglas graciously invited Lincoln to join him on the balcony to listen to the speech. . .
The eternal meaning of Independence Day (2) (Scott Johnson)
President Calvin Coolidge celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1926, with a speech providing a magisterial review of the history and thought underlying the Declaration. His speech on the occasion deserves to be read and studied in its entirety. The following paragraph, however, is particularly relevant to the challenge that confronts us in the variants of the progressive dogma that pass themselves off today as the higher wisdom:
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
NYC Democrats have chosen an interesting candidate
. . . in the end we have to face the fact that the present front-runner for mayor is the most woefully inadequate candidate possible.
Promising the most woefully impossible agenda.
On Mamdani’s qualifications the facts speak for themselves.
Mamdani may be presenting himself as the representative of struggling New Yorkers, but he himself is anything but.
Privately schooled at the Bank Street school, he went on to study at Bowdoin College in Maine.
From there he loafed around for a bit, trying to make it as a rapper before deciding to become a political activist.
Truly a story of American struggle.
The young hipsters who are his biggest supporters are thrilled to have a declared socialist (one who has used old-fashioned Marxist rhetoric about seizing the means of production) as their candidate. He is downplaying the Marxist language right now, but the internet is forever. Let's just go with his current campaign, never mind the goof-ups already noted by Murray above:
I blame the universities, in large part, for the appeal of this guy. The current dust-up over his identifying himself as African-American stemmed from an internet sleuth trying to keep tabs on Columbia, for example.
There three posts by different authors and commenters this week with lots of food for thought on where the universities have let us down at Chicago Boyz this week. Check out the recent posts on the Fourth of July, too.
From commenter "Mike" at the last link above:
Great thoughts in this thread: Mike June 29, 2025 at 7:47 pm
I think the overproduction of worthless college degrees is and the resentment it generates among their holders is one problem. It provides a degree of anger for people who feel their ambitions, whether material or emotional are not being filled
I think there’s another problem which is, the what? The Zeitgeist? A problem with the higher education system and the hatred it preaches to students is that not only does it make students at best indifferent to their culture and past but makes them openly hostile to it. A rejection of the past means a rejection not only a rejection of its collective wisdom and prudence but the elevation of individual will as the highest virtue
If that sounds a little too high-minded think of it this way – we have a large, seething mass of resentful college-educated young people who think they are the smartest and most virtuous people the world has ever produced and that they are only being held back from immanentizing the eschaton by corrupt forces. They are on the cutting-edge of History and the past has nothing to teach them . .
Btw… as Bruce Abbott commented in the previous thread if you want to look at the decline of the American higher ed system look no further than Bowdoin College which has gone from producing Joshua Chamberlain to Zohran Momdani. Somehow it seems totally appropriate to their respective given times.
Let's think about why a mayoral candidate has a foreign policy. Peter W. Wood has written a piece on his education, but much of the piece is is about his father. Even though Wood wrote an exhaustive review of education at Bowdoin in 2013, when our mayoral candidate was at school there.
His father was a settler colonialist in Uganda, and his parents were conflicted about this issue. Their son's middle name honors a famous Black African revolutionary.
Teaching African Studies at Columbia, it must have been interesting for Dad to teach about Idi Amin, who kicked him out of the country.
Junior was a perfect fit at Bowdoin.
Story Time
There is a joke about macaroni and cheese being the most popular vegetable in the South. Another says that in the South macaroni and cheese is a food group unto itself. So, how did the remarkable and beloved dish become such an important feature of Southern cuisine? For history lovers, the answer is fascinating.
Thomas Jefferson was, among many other things, an epicure and a Francophile. When he learned in May 1784 that he had been appointed American Minister to France, Jefferson recognized the opportunity to realize one his ambitions. He sent immediately for James Hemings.
Elizabeth Hemings and her twelve children (including James and his famous half-sister Sally) had been slaves of Martha Jefferson’s father, John Wayles, and Martha had inherited them when her father died. The Hemings family was afforded special privileges by the Jeffersons, one being that, although still legally slaves, Elizabeth’s sons were allowed to work for wages and keep the money they earned. At the time he was summoned to join Jefferson on his voyage to Paris, 20-year-old James was working as a riding valet in Richmond. Jefferson thought highly of James’ abilities and knew him to be intelligent and trustworthy. Jefferson had long wanted to have a French-trained chef at Monticello, and he chose James to be that man.
In July 1784 Jefferson and James Hemings sailed for France, with Jefferson’s daughter Martha traveling with them. For three years James studied French cuisine in Paris, eventually becoming the head chef at Jefferson’s Paris residence the Hôtel de Langeac, which functioned also as the American embassy. James used some of his wages to hire a French tutor, gaining a good command of the language while there.
Jefferson and James Hemings returned to America in 1789, Jefferson having been appointed Secretary of State. Slavery was illegal in France at the time, so James could have stayed behind, a free man in Paris. Why he returned, while still technically a slave, is unknown. Tradition in the Hemings family is that James negotiated the conditions of his return, which may well be true. But the details are lost to history for now. What we do know is that James Hemings went with Jefferson to Philadelphia, where he served as the chief chef for the Secretary of State, earning the same wages as the other staff.
Under Pennsylvania law at the time, any enslaved person who remained in the state for more than six months became free. Because he lived in Philadelphia longer than that, James Hemings was entitled to his freedom. But as in France, he did not elect to claim it immediately. Instead he and Jefferson negotiated an agreement.
Jefferson did not want James to leave until he had trained a replacement, and for reasons we do not know, James agreed to stay on for that purpose. On the eve of his retirement to Monticello, Jefferson drew up an agreement with James that read:
“Having been at great expense in having James Hemings taught the art of cookery, desiring to befriend him, and to require from him as little in return as possible, I do hereby promise and declare, that if the said James shall go with me to Monticello in the course of the ensuing winter, when I go to reside there myself, and shall there continue until he shall have taught such person as I shall place under him for that purpose to be a good cook, this previous condition being performed, he shall be thereupon made free, and I will thereupon execute all proper instruments to make him free. Given under my hand and seal in the county of Philadelphia and state of Pennsylvania this 15th day of September one thousand seven hundred and ninety three.”
Back in Monticello, James Hemings trained the man chosen by Jefferson to be his replacement—James’s 23-year-old brother Peter Hemings. About two years later, once he had imparted to Peter all of the culinary skills he had learned in France, James was officially and legally manumitted by Jefferson.
But back to macaroni and cheese. While in France James Hemings learned to prepare, among other things, French fries and ice cream—both of which were popularized in America after being served at the Jefferson residence. Likewise “macaroni pie,” which we would now call macaroni and cheese. The dish had become popular in Europe after 1769 and James Hemings learned to make it while in France, bringing his own recipe back to America with him. In 1802 Jefferson served “macaroni pie” at a state dinner, using James Hemings’s recipe. In 1824, Jefferson’s cousin Mary Randolph published “The Virginia Housewife,” which would become the most influential cookbook of the 19th century. Included in it was the recipe for “macaroni and cheese.” The rest is history.
Unfortunately, however, there is no happy ending to the James Hemings story. After being granted his freedom James became a traveler, returning to France for a while and possibly visiting other places in Europe. By 1801 he was working as a chef in Baltimore, and by then had become a chronic alcoholic. We don’t know whether it was his alcoholism or something else that drove him to such despair, but in 1801, at age 36, James Hemings took his own life.
Thomas Jefferson, his daughter Martha, and James Hemings sailed for France on July 5, 1784, two hundred forty-one years ago today.
Music
Hope you have something nice planned for this Independence Day weekend.
This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.