by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Today marks the 249th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and, as we look to next year’s commemoration as part of the America250 project, the Homestead will offer programming that looks at various aspects of how the promise of the document reverberated through our interpretive time period of 1830 to 1930.
This post looks at how Independence Day was commemorated in Los Angeles during the mid-1850s, not quite a decade after the American invasion and seizure of Mexican California during the first imperial war launched by the United States. That ended with the taking of Los Angeles on 9 January 1847 as William Workman and others held aloft a white flag of truce as forces marched into town.
Nathan Masters, among others, has written about the first Fourth of July celebration which took place almost a half-year later as the garrison that governed the pueblo raised the American flag and gunfire rang out amid the construction on the hill west of the Plaza of what was known as Fort Moore. The Declaration was read before residents, most of them Spanish-speaking Californios still processing what was taking place in the aftermath of the seizure of the pueblo, while a 21-gun salute and artillery fire followed.
As Masters noted, “no Independence Day celebration since has stated the realities of the American conquest so directly as on Los Angeles’ first Fourth,” though the fireworks of today are “a faint echo of the city’s martial past.” That word “martial,” in fact, remained operative in some of the Independence Day commemorations that followed, so we’ll carry this forward seven years to 1854.
The Southern Californian, the second newspaper to publish in the Angel City after the Star, which began operations three years earlier, and which was newly launched, noted in its 20 July issue the celebration conducted by two local citizen militias, these generally established to augment the very meager local law enforcement during a period of significant crime and violence as well as being akin to a social club. The paper continued,
This being concluded, the Riflemen [perhaps the Los Angeles Rangers] in turn escorted their fellow company [Los Angeles Guards] to their dinner-room, and returned to seat themselves in company with their invited guests to a well-spread and bountifully supplied table arranged for the occasion. Over seventy guests were seated, and a more happy and jovial company could not well be got together under other circumstances.
Military personnel, the officers and passengers of the recently arrived steamer at San Pedro, the Rifles company and others were present with toasts offered to President Franklin Pierce, Governor John Bigler and to Myron Norton, a lieutenant with Jonathan D. Stevenson’s New York Volunteers who were garrisoned at Los Angeles in 1847 and who became an attorney and judge, as well as a militia officer, in town after that, as well as to John O. Wheeler, captain of the Guards, and soon to be co-owner of the paper with William Butts.
Once the men ate, they left and the arrangements committee reset the table “for the fair sex at night,” leading to the statement that,
Sir, had you been there to see the mass of congregated beauty you would have exclaimed that we had a right to be proud of our little city. All joined in the merry dance, and at the hour of one about fifty of “nature’s loveliest flowers” were seated to partake of our cheer. The members of the two [militia] companies visited each other’s Ball-room, and everything passed off pleasantly and harmoniously, the only exclamation on the following day being, that we may all live to pass many a Fourth of July as the present.
In 1855, recorded the Star of 7 July, the City Guards, organized in February, “under the command of Capt. W[illiam] W. Twist,” another Stevenson’s regiment veteran and former Santa Barbara County sheriff whose arrival in Los Angeles was just prior to his formation of the Guards, “made their appearance in a new uniform on the Fourth, which elicited the applause and admiration of all our citizens.”
Praise was heaped upon Twist and his men for their “martial bearing” and “the precision with which many difficult evolutions were performed,” this having “reflected great credit” on the captain, who was further lauded “for his energy and perseverance.” It was added that “after marching through several streets accompanied with a band of music,” the Guards “were reviewed by Lieut. Col. [Benjamin L.] Beall, U.S. Army.”
The paper continued that,
The 79th anniversary of American Independence was celebrated in a patriotic spirit in this city. At sunrise a national salute [as in 1847] was fired by the “City Guards,” from the hills in the rear of the city, that aroused all from their slumbers who had let the sleepy “Somnus” [the Roman god of sleep] get the advantage of their patriotism. From the Hotels, Bella Union and Los Angeles, the “STARS AND STRIPES” were unfurled to the breeze, and the patriotic proprietor [William Arnhold] of GAMBRINUS HALL [a beer, liquor, wine and cigar establishment at the corner of Commercial and Los Angeles streets], with the spirit of freedom unquenched, raised at great expense a liberty pole, surmounted with a cap and our national emblem fluttering in the breeze.
Arrayed in their new uniforms, the Guards escorted residents to the garden of Dr. Leonce Hoover, a native of Switzerland who purportedly was a surgeon on the Napoleonic campaign of 1812 that foundered in the invasion of Russia and who was a major vineyardist and wine-maker in town (Hoover Street, the early western boundary of the pueblo and city, is named for his son, banker and developer, Vincent).
There, on the west bank of the Los Angeles River east of the Plaza along the Aliso Road, “a bountiful dinner was provided for the occasion.” District Attorney and future Mayor Cameron E. Thom read the Declaration of Independence and Phineas Banning, later the “Port Admiral” of Wilmington and key supporter and beneficiary of the Union Army presence among a hotbed of Confederate support during the Civil War, “delivered an eloquent oration.” Another “patriotic address” was given by A.H. Clarke. As with the prior year,
The ladies were then escorted to the table, where an abundance of everything was displayed to please the appetite and give pleasure and enjoyment to the occasion.
The San Gabriel Valley town of El Monte, lying near the Río Hondo, the old channel of the San Gabriel River, was founded by migrants from the Southern United States a few years prior and it became a particularly vocal supporter of the Confederate cause in the ensuing war as well as the base of the “Monte Boys,” who considered themselves something of an unofficial militia in seeking out criminals, often in notable excess when it came to lynchings of suspects, most of whom were Latino.
Yet, the Star reported, the Independence Day event there was “by the Sons of Temperance,” an anti-alcohol organization, “in connection with the Sunday Schools and citizens,” with the celebration deemed to be “one of the finest affairs that ever came off in this county.” The account continued that,
At 10 o’clock A.M. the Sons to the number of about seventy, assembled at their hall in Lexington [ a community that was separate from El Monte], and after opening the Division, formed a procession under their Marshals, and in marching through the streets of Lexington were joined by the Sabbath Schools and citizens, and from there the procession marched to the grove of Br. [Baptist minister Richard] Fryer, where a stand, seats and booths, were erected for the accommodation of the multitudes which we hear variously estimated at from 1000 to 1500.
If accurate, the attendance was rather remarkable considering that the population of the El Monte township, covering the town and a large surrounding area of the Valley was officially given as 1,004, though another 1,400 people lived in Azusa, San Gabriel and San José (Pomona and nearby locales), while some Los Angeles people perhaps attended, as well as from Los Nietos (Whittier, Downey, etc.) to the south.
In any case, the large assemblage heard a prayer by the Rev. W. Foreman, a Declaration reading by I.S.G. Woods, orations by S. Campbell and R.R. Dunlap, a patriotic tune by W. Kelley and a recitation of a poem by the Rev. J.G. Johnson.” Installation of Sons of Temperance members into the Lexington Division was also part of the program and considered “interesting and instructive.” Woods’ reading was “in a clear and distinct voice” and the crowd listened “with that attention which that inspired instrument always calls up in the breast of every true American.”
Campbell’s address “was eloquent and impressive” and the Star added that “in reviewing the toils and privations of our revolutionary sires,” the speech “brought forcibly to mind the value of our National birth-right to every American citizen.” Dunlap’s speech was merely said to have been “listened to with serious attention,” while Kelly’s singing “was received with cheers of approbation.” Johnson’s nine-verse poem included these sample lines:
The stripes on our tri-colored badge
The red, and the white and the blue,
Are types of the motive and manner
Each Temperance Son should pursue.
The red that composes the border,
Proclaims that love reigns in the breast
Of each, to each one in the order,
And prompts us to give aid in distress.
The white is a representation
That purity marks our design;
We aim at our country’s salvation,
And work for the good of mankind.
The blue is a beautiful emblem;
That fidelity governs us too;
We’ll never prove false or dissemble,
But all to our pledges prove true . . .
After the program concluded, the Sons gathered and marched “to the Table spread in a shady grove, and loaded with delicacies and eatables of all kinds.” The women and Sunday School students served the men “when the usual courtesies were duly attended too [sic]” and the account concluded with the obvious remark that “no wines or spirituous liquors made their appearance” while “everything passed off in the most quiet and peaceable manner.”
Notably, there were no official commemorations or celebrations by the pueblo authorities, meaning the Common (City) Council, nor any record of the participation of anyone but the white population of Los Angeles and El Monte. So, when allusions were made to the “National birth-right to every American citizen” and the “spirit of freedom unquenched,” it bears remembering that there were thousands of greater Los Angeles residents who were invisible at these Independence Day events.
The majority of these were the Spanish-speaking Californios, born or raised in the region, and Mexicans, all of whom living there prior to the American seizure in 1847 were, by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War when ratified the next year, automatically bestowed American citizenship. Yet, the significant tensions between Latinos and Anglos that followed the war generally involved the lack of full participation of citizenship of the former because of the attitudes and actions of the latter, though upper class Latinos allied with powerful Anglos had more benefits than those lower on the socio-economic scale. As the century progressed, even these individuals shrank dramatically in number as their financial standing slipped along with political power and social status and rampant racism against them increased.
There were still, moreover, a large number of indigenous people, including those who married Latinos, but they were diminishing rapidly in the face of diseases like smallpox, violence, alcoholism and other factors. Citizenship was excluded and they were not considered capable, if not worthy, of it. The poem spoke of love and aid to those in need, as well as the good of humankind, but native people were typically not treated as fully human and certainly not as civilized, though the behavior of so-called civilized people was often terribly inhuman.
Only a handful of Chinese persons lived in greater Los Angeles during this period, but they, too, were denied any hope, if entertained, of citizenship and were deemed totally alien and not assimilable. The Black community numbered perhaps a few dozen in the mid-1850s and, for those that were free before coming to California, that was very conditional as the 1849 Constitution’s prohibition against slavery had nothing to do with African-American freedom and everything to do with keeping as many Black persons out of the state because of concerns of unfair labor competition.
Some African-Americans were brought here as slaves and, despite the state Constitution’s mandate, were openly treated in de facto bondage. At the time the Independence Day celebrations were being held locally, a group of them residing near San Bernardino were about to be taken to the Santa Monica Mountains near the coast, where Pacific Palisades is now, and then transported to Texas and back to legal slavery. In early 1856, however, Biddy Mason and Hannah Embers and their children were freed in a habeus corpus case before District Court Judge Benjamin I. Hayes and, while, their freedom was also limited—even after the 14th and 15th amendments were ratified after the war—they at least were delivered from bondage.
As noted at the beginning of this post, the Declaration is a powerful and foundational document for American democracy and freedom, though the promise it embodies has to be measured against the realities of what have transpired since and current political conditions. We’ll return next Independence Day with more about commemorations in 1850s Los Angeles, so look for that this time next year.