July 4th: Today and Yesterday on the Web

The history of July 4th – Independence Day -- celebrations is the subject of the Library of Congress American Memory’s “Today in History: July 4,” http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jul04.html. While actually a lesson plan, for insight into the history of the Liberty Bell and wonderful photographs, visit the National Park Service's "The Liberty Bell: From Obscurity to Icon" at http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/36liberty/
36liberty.htm. The United States Department of State explains the significance of the event at http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/holidays/july4/. Online versions of the text of the Declaration of Independence are accessible from various sources, including: the Yale Law School’s Avalon Project, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/declare.htm and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/
declaration.html. A history of Jefferson's editing of the document is available in the Library of Congress Information Bulletin at http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9907/jeffdec.html. Carl Becker's close anaylsis of the document, The Declaration of Independence: A Study on the History of Political Ideas (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1922) is available in full text at http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0034. Although not on the Web, see also "Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document" American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism, edited by Thomas W. Benson (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990). While designed for the primary grades, the lesson plan "Declare the Causes: The Declaration of Independence," at the National Endowment for the Humanities EDSITEment Web site, is instructive and includes an excellent list of additional resources, http://edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=282. Also useful is the teacher's guide to the appropriate epsiode of the PBS documentary Liberty, http://www.pbs.org/ktca/liberty/tguide_2.html. For background information, the UB community can use the “Overview” option of History Resource Center: U.S., http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/hrc.html. This will retrieve the full text of entries from several academic encyclopedias.

Listen to a report on Washington’s preparation for July 4, 2004 on National Public Radio at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3124028. To hear your favorite NPR personalities read sections of the Declaration (2003) visit http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2003/jul/declaration/
declaration/. For recent images of past July 4th celebrations use AccuNet/AP Multimedia Archive, http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/photo.html. The easiest way to search for material is to enter 7/4/year (for instance, 7/4/2004) in the “when” query box.

For even more serious contemplation: Lost and found in translation. The Organization of American Historians' Journal of American History sponsored a roundtable on the Declaration in translation in 1999, which is now fully accessible on the Web at http://chnm.gmu.edu/declaration/. For the version that appeared in the March 1999 JAH use JStor, http://www.jstor.org/browse/00218723?config=jstor. Historians Willi Paul Adams and David Thelen write: "We chose the Declaration of Independence . . . because we expected that its translations would open up rich possibilities for observing both individual creativity and cultural filters." The intent of the OAH project: "Most of the world's past comes to us in translation. 'It may not overstate the case,' writes L. G. Kelly, 'to claim that the history of the world could be told through the history of translation. Indeed, one might even assert that, without translation, there is no history of the world.' At a time when people and ideas, culture and business, seem increasingly to cross barriers of language, translation from one language to another becomes a necessary part of the action. And that action is neither transparent nor automatic." Individual scholarly essays consider the Declaration as translated and interrpeted through the cultures and languages of France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Isreal, Japan, China, Poland, and Russia.