Yesterday, July 4, 2026, was the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Our family was present and helped secure the flagpole,. Then two of our grandchildren raised the flag to the top of the pole while our national anthem played.
I remember celebrating our 200th anniversary in my little hometown of Winnebago, Minnesota. There was a huge parade, I marched in the band, and there were plenty of ways to celebrate throughout the day. Fortunately, I was blissfully unaware of the political climate at that time.
Fifty years later, I’m older and painfully aware of the political climate. There is so much rhetoric now, and events far sadder than I could have imagined that 18th summer of my youth.
The Star Spangled Banner
What hasn’t changed is my love for that flag and for this country. Our national anthem carries that love in the words themselves. The Star Spangled Banner actually has four verses, though we only ever sing the first. Every verse ends the same way, with that banner still waving over a free and brave land. The final two lines read: “And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave, O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”
That freedom was hard fought. So many sacrificed for it 250 years ago, and so many still stand ready to do the same if called.
The Great Anniversary Festival
John Adams understood that cost before almost anyone. He wrote the following to his wife Abigail on July 3, 1776, one day after Congress voted for independence and one day before the Declaration’s final wording was adopted. It was his certain opinion Americans would celebrate that vote forever. (John Adams was correct, but he had the date wrong. Instead of July 2nd, we celebrate July 4th.)
“I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
“You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.”
Adams signed his name to the Declaration of a nation still unformed. He risked a charge of treason if the revolution failed. We risked nothing yesterday except the effort to dig a hole and raise a pole. Our two grandchildren lifted the flag with their own small hands. That is their inheritance, carried from Adams’ pen in 1776 to their hands on an afternoon 250 years later.
