Hawaii History Blog Profiles: July 4 in Hawaii

It is said that Americans living or visiting Hawaii have been celebrating America's tumultuous beginning since 1814. How has the Fourth of July, the national independence day of the United States of America, been observed and celebrated in Hawaii? July 4 in Hawaii seeks to provide answers to this question. 

Most of the blog postings consist of press accounts directly transcribed from original source materials. Many are eyewitness accounts of July 4 celebrations on all the main islands of the Hawaiian archipelago. Some postings consist of full published texts of speeches delivered in various location. Members of the Hawaiian royal family, sailors and seamen, military personnel, American missionaries, businessmen and others from around the world attended many of the celebrations. 

The blog provides opportunities for visitors to use word and name searches where research may be involved. All texts are transcribed and proofread by volunteers. 

"At the outset," wrote historian Gordon S. Wood, "Americans saw their Revolution as a heroic moral struggle  for liberty against the evils of British tyranny, with the participants being larger-than-life heroes or villains. Then through much of the nineteenth century, largely through the work of George Bancroft, the Revolution lost some of its highly personal character and became the providential fulfillment of the American people's democratic destiny, something preordained from the very beginning of the seventeenth century colonial settlements." 

July 4 in Hawaii is one of the featured blogs in the Hawaii History Blogs Project that is part of the Hawaii Lyceum of History, a unique online-based program originating from and sponsored by History Education Hawaii, Inc., the official council in Hawaii of the National Council for History Education.