Independence Day : $b its celebration, spirit and significance as related in prose and verse
History
Independence Day : $b its celebration, spirit and significance as related in prose and verse
Fourth of July -- Poetry; Fourth of July celebrations; Fourth of July orations
The Pageant of Liberty, which is here proposed, is based on the idea that
America was the pioneer in that modern struggle for liberty which has
played such a striking part in the world’s history since 1776. Our War of
Independence inspired the French Revolution which, in turn, brandished
the torch of liberty through Europe during the nineteenth century until,
in our day, the flame has spread to other continents.
This Pageant consists of a parade of simple floats which may or may not
end in a dramatic and choral performance or “masque” in some athletic
field or fair ground or stadium. The floats and their costumed characters
are to be the actors in this masque.
These floats need not be elaborate or expensive or hard to construct. In
most cases all that is required is a plain large truck, festooned with
simple garlands, and with the wheels hidden in oak branches. This truck
carries the necessary characters, dressed, of course, in the costume of
the period.
There need be none of those complicated, elaborately colored, pyramidal
structures of “staff” which endangered the success of the Hudson-Fulton
Celebration in New York City. For they are difficult and costly to
prepare and doubtful of effect. The effect sought should be pictorial
rather than sculpturesque. In many cases a single small platform or table
is the only “property” required.
The floats in procession represent the history of the modern struggle for
liberty. This history, however, may be depicted as fully or as sketchily
as the particular resources of each place suggest, each foreign colony in
a town working up its own float under central supervision.
In our day most American cities and towns have a large percentage of the
foreign born. Let us suppose, for example, that a certain large town
consists of the following nine nationalities: Americans, French, Irish,
Servians, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, and Persians. In that
case its particular pageant would consist of at least ten floats, each
attended on foot or horseback by its appropriate escort of the same race,
preferably in national costume, and by bands of music playing—perhaps on
native instruments—those national airs most nearly identified with the
particular historical event set forth.
I. THE AMERICAN float will naturally head the procession, for precedence
in this pageant is fixed by the historical order in which the various
struggles for liberty occurred.
The American float might represent the Fathers sitting about a table and
signing the Declaration of Independence, with the Liberty Bell hanging
aloft. Or it might be boat-shaped, with Washington in the bow, crossing
the Delaware and tattered soldiers straining at the oars or poling away
at imaginary ice-cakes.
The other floats would follow in this order:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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