History Book: Fourth of July presidential speeches

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, July 3rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book. Tomorrow is American Independence Day. So today, WORLD Radio Executive Producer Paul Butler has a few excerpts from past Presidential speeches marking the 4th of July.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: For more than 220 years U.S. Presidents have marked the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence with speeches and special commemorations. In 1801 Thomas Jefferson hosted the first 4th of July celebration at the presidential residence. The event included a picnic, horse races, and parades. In the years since, most presidents have marked the anniversary with speeches of thanksgiving for the preservation of our nation’s freedoms.

Today we’ll feature excerpts from three such addresses. We begin 160 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Here’s Franklin D. Roosevelt from July 4th, 1936, speaking in front of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: When we read of the patriots of 1776 and the Fathers of the Constitution, we are taken into the presence of men who caught the fire of greatness from one another. The source of their greatness was the stirring of a new sense of freedom. They were tasting the first fruits of self-government and freedom of conscience. Theirs were not the gods of things as they were, but the gods of things as they ought to be.

Next, July 4th, 1962. President John F Kennedy addresses 100,000 people jammed into Philadelphia’s Independence Square. With news of an emerging Atlantic partnership, Kennedy says America’s freedoms are the first fruits of what awaits the rest of the world.

JOHN F KENNEDY: On Washington's birthday in 1861, standing right there, President elect Abraham Lincoln spoke at this hall on his way to the nation's capitol. And he paid a brief but eloquent tribute to the men who wrote, who fought for and who died for the Declaration of Independence. Its essence he said, was its promise not only liberty to the people of this country, but hope to the world. Hope that in due time, the weight should be lifted from the shoulders of all men. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. [APPLAUSE]

And finally this morning, July 4th, 1986. After a nearly two year restoration project, the Statue of Liberty is about to reopen to the public in time for her 100th birthday. Ronald Regan speaks from the deck of the USS John F. Kennedy in New York Harbor ahead of a celebratory firework display.

RONALD REAGAN: All through our history, our presidents and leaders have spoken of national unity, and warned us that the real obstacle to moving forward the boundaries of freedom—the only permanent danger to the hope that is America—comes from within. It's easy enough to dismiss this as a kind of familiar exhortation. Yet the truth is that even two of our greatest Founding Fathers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson once learned this lesson late in life. They'd worked so closely together in Philadelphia for independence. But once that was gained, and a government was formed, something called partisan politics began to get in the way. After a bitter and divisive campaign, Jefferson defeated Adams for the presidency in 1800. And the night before Jefferson's inauguration, Adams slipped away to Boston, disappointed, brokenhearted, and bitter. For years their estrangement lasted. But when both had retired Jefferson at 68 to Monticello, and Adams at 76 to Quincy, they began through their letters to speak again to each other. It carries me back to Jefferson wrote about correspondence with his co-signer of the Declaration of Independence, to the times when beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right to self-government. Laboring always at the same or with some wave ever ahead, threatening to overwhelm us and yet passing harmless, we rode through the storm with heart and hand. It was their last gift to us. This lesson in brotherhood, this insight into America's strength as a nation. And when both died on the same day, within hours of each other, that date was July 4th, 50 years exactly after that first gift to us, the Declaration of Independence.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

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