Kermit Roosevelt: Juneteenth’s vision of freedom expresses American values better than the Fourth of July’s
the Fourth of July as the start to a “summer of freedom” to throw off pandemic restrictions. But the relationship between July 4 and individual freedom is complicated and ambiguous. The Declaration of Independence brought freedom of a sort to the American colonists. No longer, they were now citizens of their states, governing themselves. But it did nothing for the half a million people deprived of freedom in a much starker sense, the people enslaved by the American colonists.
Confronted with these facts, we may reassure ourselves that the two holidays are complementary, that Juneteenth is the completion of the struggle for liberty that started with July 4. Most of us have absorbed the idea, famously articulated by Abraham Lincoln in the, that the Declaration of Independence was on the side of the Union. Lincoln’s view is now virtually unchallenged. But it has prevailed largely because Lincoln’s side won the Civil War.
In the same way, the Civil War is the flip side of the American Revolution. States that recognize slavery declare their independence from a nation that has partially banned the practice. The nation refuses to accept independence and fights a war to stop it. As part of that war, it offers freedom to people enslaved by the states. That’s the Civil War, with the United States as the nation, but it’s also the Revolution, with the U.S. as the states.
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