A Century of Orations: Nathan Perl-Rosenthal Listens to 2,500 Voices of the American Revolution

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It's not long now. America is almost 250 years old. It's only a couple of weeks until the nation celebrates with barbecues and parades and, all sorts of things. One thing that perhaps people won't be doing is making speeches about what it means to be 250 years old and what the American Revolution, means to them and to their communities. My guest today, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, has a new book out. It's called The Long Revolution, Creating a United States after 1776, which looks at America in terms of these, July 4 orations to make sense of both, American history and the revolution in American, life. Nathan is joining us from Cambridge. Is that fair, Nathan? Am I summarizing your book correctly? The Long Revolution creating United States after 1776.

00:01:35 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Impeccable.

00:01:37 Andrew Keen: Oh, that was a quick interview.

00:01:42 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: I can tell you're wrong and tell you other things, but that was great.

00:01:46 Andrew Keen: So this idea of looking back you're a historian. You're currently at the University of Southern California. You're involved with Harvard University. What did looking back at all these orations Nathan teach us or teach you as a historian about the revolutionary tradition in America?

00:02:06 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Yeah. So maybe I should just say a little bit about how many of these orations there are and a little bit about where they are. Would that be alright?

00:02:14 Andrew Keen: That'd be good. It's your show. You do whatever you like. You can even give an oration. Maybe at the end, we'll we'll ask you for a July 4 oration.

00:02:22 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Well, Well, we're not gonna have time because the orations would go on. In the time that I'm looking at, they go on for an hour or more.

00:02:29 Andrew Keen: Well, this is the Internet. It's infinite, Nathan. We can do it for hours. We can do it for days even.

00:02:33 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Alright. You're on. You're on. So there are probably something like a 100,000 of these orations delivered during the first century after independence. That's a rough estimate based on contemporary estimates. You have to imagine that there are, you know, probably a thousand towns and villages, cities, which are having, orations every year in hundred years. And of those, we have lots of evidence of bits and pieces of them in newspapers, things like that. But there are 2,500 of them, 2,500, which are published during this first century, as pamphlets. We have the whole text. And the website you're seeing, intermittently there, fourth of July orations, is, basically a digital, database, that lists all of those and tells you where they happen, and you can, you can even see, different locations, look at it year by year. So these 2,500 published orations are kind of distinctive window into, American life. They tell us about really what, what a kind of public facing group of people are thinking about The United States in this period, what they think America is about, and what they think the revolution is about. And the crucial, I would say, the sort of the first thing to say about them is in the title of the book. The orators most orators deep into the nineteenth century think that the revolution is still ongoing, not five years after the end of the revolution in 1783, not ten years, not twenty, but as late as the civil war, as late as the eighteen fifties and sixties, and even into reconstruction into the 1870s, there are orators, many orators who come up and say the revolution is still underway. We are still figuring out what it is. And so they see themselves not as remembering it, but as actors in a in a long revolution, an ongoing revolution.

00:04:33 Andrew Keen: The word, the r word, of course, revolution is controversial. There are historians of America who see it more in reformist terms and particularly if they're conservative, think of revolutions in an unhealthy way associating it with France or the later Russian and Chinese revolutions. What does the word mean to you, or what did you discover about the word in terms of digging into these archives, these orations? Well, we are most people in agreement that on July 4, we should be talking and celebrating a, quote, unquote, revolution?

00:05:12 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Yeah. Well, it's a it's a great question and one that, actually, I've worked on in some other context as well. So it's it's a really, important and live and live question. What it means, for there to be a revolution? What it means to talk about revolution in the nineteenth century or since? Orators certainly do think that there was a revolution. And one of the one of the distinctive features of these orations I think one naively, I certainly thought this when I started reading the orations. I thought, well, you know, they're they're gonna be interesting. I'm gonna learn things, but there's also gonna be a lot of, you know, rah America, you know, rah, the American revolution. It was so great. And in fact, that's not at all what these orations are. They do have some of that, but a lot of them actually are very critical of, The United States, of the American Revolution, and they spend a lot of time comparing it to other revolutionary experiences. To the French Revolution, of course, that's especially the case in the seventeen nineties and the early nineteenth century, right, during and after the kind of main phase of the of the French revolution, but really deep into the nineteenth century. But then after that, in the eighteen teens and twenties, they're comparing the American revolution to revolutions in Spanish America. In 1830, 1848, they're comparing it to revolutions in Europe. And the comparisons don't always work out in America's favor. Let's put it that way. Very frequently, there are, you know, a sort of a growing, I would say, cohort of orators who say, you know, actually, some of these other revolutions have gotten it right in ways that we haven't. And especially as slavery becomes a bigger and bigger topic of discussion. There's more and more critical commentary on the American Revolution, even from people who are pretty, let's say, you know, mainstream. Right? So we're talking about, like, wealthy Bostonians who are giving the Boston oration, which is one of the oldest ones, will say things like, you know, honestly, our forefathers did a great job, but they really didn't deal with this slavery problem. You know, and they're they come out right and say that in, in these orations and, you know, then sort of develop those critiques. So I do think they definitely think there is revolution underway, and in the past, but they're very, it's not a settled definition. Let's put it that way. It's not a settled thing. It's a thing which is still ongoing and which is, you know, being defined and redefined in dialogue with other places.

00:07:42 Andrew Keen: A living revolution. We did a show a couple of weeks ago with a fellow historian, Sarah Pearsall. She teaches history at Johns Hopkins. I'm sure you're familiar with her new book, Freedom Round the Globe: A World History of the American Revolution. She kind of inverses your narrative and thinks of and thinks of how America was seen around the world in a revolutionary sense. Were the in the orations you've been reading, Nathan, which you include in the long revolution, did many of the Americans making their speeches think of themselves as providing an example to the rest of the world? Did they see themselves on a kind of global stage and July 4 being their big show?

00:08:33 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Yeah. So Sarah's a good friend and, someone whose work I admire. And I think we're more aligned than not, she and I. There are certainly orators and orations which do take the kind of or in the genealogy of, you know, of John Winthrop's famous city on the hill speech. Right? The idea that, John Winthrop, who's one of the founding figures of Puritan, New England, Puritan, Massachusetts, says, you know, we will be as a city on the hill. The eyes of the world are upon us. Right? This idea that, you know, that The United well, what becomes The United States, that North America, North American colonies are these kind of exemplars. And that is certainly a strand, which one sees in these in these orations. I would say, it's not necessarily the dominant strand and it becomes less dominant over time. Again, as starting especially about 1830, as more and more orators take up the banner of reform movements of kind of critical views of The United States, which is the moment is undergoing industrialization, democratization. But also as, as again, as the slavery controversy comes more and more to four, they're more and more skeptical about The United States' status as an exemplar. And in fact, probably the most famous not probably, definitely the most famous fourth of July oration of the nineteenth century, which is Frederick thank you. Frederick Douglass. You knew what I was

00:10:10 Andrew Keen: I beat you to that one, although it wasn't hard, Nathan.

00:10:13 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: You certainly did. So he gave an oration in 1852, which is frequently taught in high schools and colleges. I will just say

00:10:22 Andrew Keen: is the July 4, which, of course, is a very good question.

00:10:26 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Now I will just say that's not the title of the oration. That's the title that it's often published under.

00:10:31 Andrew Keen: So what's the real right? What's the real title?

00:10:33 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Title is oration delivered at the Corinthian Hall on 07/05/1852. And I emphasize that because it stresses the way in which that oration is actually part of a genre. Even as the title that it's given is described as part of a genre, it describes the location and the date. So which is the typical way that these orations are titled. So in that oration, Douglas says, you know, search throughout the world, and you will find no place basically as vicious as The United States. So he actually flips on its head, that idea of The US as a as a model, but he's far from the only one. One of the things I do in the book is I actually look at the other 37 orations that were published that year, in 1852. And you can see that there are a number of antislavery orations in particular, which take a very similar line where they say, you know, The United States as a slave holding nation is uniquely bad, not uniquely good. It's uniquely, a counterexample, really, of liberty and democracy. So that's a strong a strong, thread in these orations, which becomes stronger as the as the antebellum period as one gets closer to the civil war.

00:11:46 Andrew Keen: So this word, Nathan, oration, it brings to mind Rome. Of course, Rome is very popular amongst conservatives. Probably don't think of America in quite the revolutionary terms you do. Mhmm. Was this self conscious did the notion of a, quote, unquote, oration on the day of independence, July 4, was it some reference to antiquity, to Rome, to Athens, to the Middle Ages? How did these orations position the American narrative within global history?

00:12:22 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Right. Fascinating question and, a difficult one because one of the tricky things about oratory, is that it has it's kind of like, you know, like a mangrove tree. It has these big roots that kind of stretch in all sorts of different directions. You can see parts of it, but not other parts. So the visible part of and I think you're you're referring to really the deep roots. Right? The ones that go all the way back to, classical models. And you are absolutely correct that, these orators are part of a tradition, which is, really starts well, it's continuous really through from the certainly from the Renaissance onward of conscious self consciously modeled on classical oratory. What the proximate set of models are. Just so there's this long tradition of imitating classical oratory. One of the things that happens in the eighteenth century, so, in the, let's say, decades before the American Revolution, is you have a shift in oratorical strategies. They're the oratory, which had been very, very formal, very, stylized, in the eighteenth century, is deliberately made somewhat more accessible, somewhat more emotive. So there's a model of a more emotive oration, and that really is the model that creates the fourth of July oration. The fourth of July orations grow out of, an earlier set, specifically American set of orations, which is the orations on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, which start in 1771. And, basically, the purpose of these orations starting in 1771, they're set up by the Patriot leadership, the kind of, you know, the resistance leadership of Boston. The purpose of these orations is to rile people up. So they give these impassioned orations year after year on the anniversary of the massacre, which are designed really to kind of, at a moment as it turns out, I'm not I don't wanna get too deeply into the weeds, but the moment when they start 1771 is actually a quiet period in the imperial crisis running up to the revolution. So they're really people like Samuel Adams are actually trying to gin controversy back up by having this really emotional heated oratory. And that's what becomes the kind of model for the fourth of July orations. So they're in this long classical tradition, but they're in a they're they're imitating a particular kind of eighteenth century model, which is designed not to speak to other educated people, not to be kind of school orations, not to be kinda, you know, latinate orations, learned orations, but are actually supposed to be emotive, supposed to kind of connect with a large audience, and that's what they do throughout the nineteenth century. Although, as you pointed out in your opening, no more. Right?

00:15:12 Andrew Keen: No. We're gonna come to your oration, Nathan, at the end of this. May last many days or hours. In terms of the form of this oratory, quality, was perhaps implicit or explicit a kind of anti federalist message that representative government, representative democracy was all very well. But, really, when it comes to the revolution, you need direct words, direct action. Is, is a narration implicitly a challenge to the kind of more conservative political settlement that came out of the American Revolution? Maybe that's why the republic has lasted so long.

00:16:01 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Yeah. So there is certainly, that's certainly part of the, of the oratorical tradition. I would say during the earliest phase, so let's say up to the war of eighteen twelve, so that's basically the first thirty years, I think it would be hard to say that, that it's really a kind of anti establishment tradition. If you look at the profiles of the orators, they're mostly well established figures. There are during the seventeen nineties, and this has been well discussed very well discussed by, among others, David Waldstreicher, great historian of early America, in his book, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes. You know, there is, the orations are a vehicle for political controversy between Federalists and Republicans, right, between the first party system, so first real party division in The United States. But even then, really, it's kind of gentlemen on both sides of the equation, so I wouldn't see it really as a kind of anti establishment, mechanism. After 1815, you start to see the rise of what I describe as the kind of outsider orators, and that's really that really picks up in the eighteen twenties. So, for instance, in 1829, you have orations delivered by, William Lloyd Garrison, William Emmons, who's another sort of not well born person, and then most remarkably, Frances Wright, Fanny Wright, who's a, Scottish, born reformer, very, very early advocate of birth control at a time when nobody is an advocate of birth control, kind of, radical. And she gets an absolute barn burner. There's actually an excerpt from it in the book. So there's increasingly this kind of, yes, I think a kind of outsider, cohort, who and, you know, then that sort of culminates, let's say, in Douglas, in 1852 as we were just talking about before. So there is definitely an anti establishment, a rye a rising anti establishment dimension to it, and, yes, which does, in some cases, right, take a tone as you're suggesting or make the argument that this is the real, Amer you know, the real core of American politics, this kind of direct address, direct, you know, collective, organization through the July 4, not, you know, the choose your adjective, corrupt, you know, or elitist or, anti democratic, political leadership. So that's certainly that's certainly one of the uses of the fourth, and that builds over the course of the of the period that I look at the century before after independence.

00:18:53 Andrew Keen: Your book gets a nice review from the new the new republic, left liberal leaning magazine. You've talked, of course, about, Douglass and his famous speech against the idea of slavery and bringing up American patriotism and the American Revolution. But was there an alternative tradition, Nathan? Were people in the South, for example, who were sympathetic to slavery or at least to states' rights, were they making July 4 orations before the at least before the civil war or maybe even after the civil war, making the argument that the American Revolution was about states' rights, and their arguments, their more conservative arguments, but they weren't necessarily against the idea of an American Revolution.

00:19:48 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Absolutely. Absolutely. There are, orations in the South. I should just say here, this is one of the any kind of historical work, you know, what you're doing when you do historical work is you're trying to understand. Ground. Right? Because it's in the past, and we can't access it directly. And so what you do as an historian is you kind of poke if you imagine this is, like, a kind of archaeology, you use instruments to kind of probe the ground to see what's under it. Right? So you can, you know, stick probes in and take out sections. So the July 4 orations are a kind of section. They're a kind of core sample from this earlier period. And one of the limitations, any kind of core sample is by definition, right, limited to an a specific area. And the way that the core sample here is limited, is that it's skewed towards the North. Now, this is partly because for the July oratory starts really in the North, there's a long tradition in Charleston, South Carolina in particular, but it's much wider spread in the North. So the sample is skewed towards the North. I will say the whole sample of printed publications in the nineteenth century is heavily skewed towards the North. So in that sense, it's not so off. But we do have orations from the South, and you are absolutely correct. Your sort of surmise is absolutely correct. Those southern orations do take the position that the American Revolution is a defense of, let's put it, you know, of liberty and property, to use the language of the Declaration of Independence, right, written by Thomas Jefferson, Southern, slave holder in slaver. So there is absolutely, a an argument coming from the South. It's much less, it's much less loud, let's say, than the Northern arguments. But the moment when you see a kind of parody, p a r I t y, right, equality, not parody, is after, the civil war breaks out in 1861 because then you have Southerners, especially that first year, but even a couple of years after that. And this actually this is you can see this in the late eighteen fifties as well saying, you know, it's abolitionism. That's really the anti revolutionary tradition here. They actually say the abolitionists are against the revolution because they are trying to overturn the settlement basically that was worked out at the end of the revolution, which was a settlement which allowed slavery to continue in the South. So the southerners take the position where the real revolutionaries, It's the abolitionists, right, who are the anti revolutionaries, who are the counter revolutionaries, which is an interesting inversion of I'm not endorsing it, but it's an interesting, you know, argumentative strategy, which they use. So they try to claim the revolution's legacy for themselves. Absolutely.

00:22:38 Andrew Keen: Everybody does in all revolutionary societies. Your book is called The Long Revolution. Were there some of the orations that you looked at, Nathan? Did they think of it less in terms of a long revolution and more in terms of a series of revolutions? In other words, do some of these orations call for new revolutions?

00:22:59 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Mhmm. Yeah. So one of the one of the in making the argument that I make, which is to say that there is a kind of ongoing revolution, I'm not saying that's the only way that the orators see it. There are orators who do see the revolution as closed and want it to be closed. You know, gloriously terminated is how one of them describes it in the seventeen nineties, I think. I'm doing this from memory, so I'm not can't don't quote me on the date there, but, I think it's the seventeen nineties. But there are others, as you suggest, who see it as a series of revolutions, or as a series of renewals of the revolution. So there's a, and the things that they think are the renewals of the revolutions are often quite, to our eyes quite peculiar. So there is a huge number of orations in the '17 sorry, the eighteen twenties and thirties, who want a new revolution for temperance, for, you know, for, against drinking. So this is actually I excerpt this in the, in the book. On this day also did our fathers declare and maintain a second independence, from the calamities of intemperance. I'm quoting Eliakim Phillips in 1830. So, you know, the idea that there are other revolutions or renewals of the revolution is also, is also one way of seeing it.

00:24:28 Andrew Keen: We had another of your colleagues, Dominic Erdozain, and he teaches history at Emory. He has a new book out. So many books from historians, these days given what's happening, February. In his new book, To Love a Country, he argues that by definition, American patriotism is reactionary and immoral. Were some of the orations that you look at and that you treat in your book, Nathan, were they making similar conclusions that America has gone so wrong that it's a rather shameful business? Yeah. Rather than an oration then or a celebration, it's more like a speech at a funeral.

00:25:17 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the we have a we have a ready made name for this, the jeremiad. Mhmm. A very also, to come back to your observation about oratory earlier, you know, that is also a long tradition in, in early American oratory and oratory from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Jeremiah, basically, the right? Taking its name from the prophet Jeremiah is essentially a kind of, denunciation in the form of a speech, right, which calls on, the people, whoever the people is or the public here is to repent, right, and repent their, their evil. So there is a strong Jeremiah element in a lot of these, orations. And it was honestly, it was one of the things that most surprised me, in as I started reading the orations. You know, when I thought about doing this project, I thought, well, you know, I gotta read a bunch of orations to see if there's something if there's a there. And I was worried that what I was gonna find was just, you know, what so what Henry James, the novelist Henry James, in his, late nineteenth century oration referred to as spread eagleism. Right, just hyper patriotism, American hyper patriotism, that's all that there would be. And it turns out, as I said, you know, when I started reading them, I thought, my god, there is a lot of critical commentary here. And in particular, you even have orators who are critical explicitly of American patriotism in much the same way. I quote in the book, an orator, I believe in the seventeen nineties, although it might be the early nineteenth century, who says, you know, limiting patriotism to one country is the wrong move because the rights, that we're fighting for, the, the American, sort of the revolution is universal. And so, you know, you have to be a universal patriot more or less, if you're gonna be, you know, really, endorsing the values of the American Revolution. Now I wouldn't describe that as the majority view by, you know, not by a mile. But it is certainly something one hears periodically in these orations. So there's at once a very critical view of The United States that comes up a lot and criticism of American patriotism as well and of kind of, you know, excess patriotism. Now, of course, this is all happening at fourth of July celebrations. So, you know, it's a little bit of a probably a little bit of a, you know, do as I say, not as I do kind of situation. But they are certainly, calling out, kind of American exclusivism, American exceptionalism, periodically.

00:27:56 Andrew Keen: And when it comes to American exceptionalism, of course, many people argue that what's particularly exceptional about the American Revolution and American history is the role of the church. You've got an interesting review in Christianity Today about revolution, revelation, and the American dream. In many of the orations, I assume, Nathan, there was a good dose of Christianity. Did many of your orators think of America as not just a revolution, but a Christian revolution and America as a Christian republic? Did they acknowledge the church state division, or was this something that they conveniently ignored?

00:28:36 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Yeah. This was one of the things that I was actually most surprised by as I was working through the orations. They, they do use well, let's start by saying there's no question that the orators are almost all Christians. A fair number of them are ministers. So, you know, it's not, it's not as if this is a multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious group, certainly not in the early period. What is remarkable, though, is that in the early period, let's say before about 1820, there's not much explicit talk of Christianity, not much explicit talk of Christianity. It's it's somewhere in the background frequently. But I did a little sampling, this is actually in the book, to try to confirm my hunch, which I had from actually just reading the orations. And I found that out of the 190 orations that we have from before 1800, in one database, 20% of them actually use the word Christian. If you look, twenty years later from 1820 to 1840, it's 58%. And you have a lot of orations with titles like in defense of Christian patriotism. So there seems to be not a continuous tradition, but a kind of movement towards, what I suppose one could call, you know, kind of Christian nationalism, after, about 1820. And that's partly related to the revival of Christian, organization, Christian faith, Christian, church organization after 1820 in The United States, which has complex causes. But I think it's also related to, a kind of perhaps weakening of some of the more universalistic impulses in the earlier years. But I also yeah. So I there is a certainly a Christian dimension to it, but, the orators come to that over time rather than starting out there. If I can just say one other thing about that, they're also quite attentive to, as you said, the separation of church and state, which is, of course, a complex and difficult issue in American history. There's one oration I'm quite fond of, by a guy named Ezra Stiles Ely, which is called, I think, something like, the true patriot, a Christian patriot. And it's pages and pages and pages on how there needs to be a Christian party, arguing for Christian party in politics. And after the end of probably 10 pages of this, he says, you know, I just wanna be clear. I'm not calling for religious tests for office, which is of course against the constitution. Right? The constitution forbids religious tests for office. I'm just saying he's sort of I'm paraphrasing. All Christians, all good people, he sort of blurs the distinction, should probably, you know, work together. So, you know, it's a little bit a little bit of this, a little bit of that. On the one hand, he seems to really want to have a kind of Christian basis for politics. And on the other hand, he seems very aware of the fact that is there were limits on those, on that kind of, movement in, in American politics from the constitution.

00:31:53 Andrew Keen: July 4 happens I mean, it may actually be an argument against the American nature of God because July 4 happens to fall on a Saturday rather than a Sunday. I think if there was a Christian God, he would have made sure it fell on a Sunday, but maybe I'm wrong on that one. I can't prove it one way or the other. Is there any difference though, of course, many Americans will go to church. They don't go on Saturdays, they go on Sundays to hear a sermon. Is there any difference between a sermon? You've mentioned this jeremiad. But is there any difference really, Nathan, between orations and sermons? Has the tradition of the American oration now developed into the sermon? Have you gone from Saturday to Sunday in American life?

00:32:45 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Right. So, orators in the nineteenth century are extremely conscious of that question. That's a question that they really they address head on. The orations are not sermons. Not sermons. And the proof of that is that in the nineteenth century, typically, when the July 4 does fall on a Sunday, they actually delay the celebration till the following day, till July 5. So, from the very earliest years, this is from the, you know, the seventeen eighties and nineties, if the fourth falls on a Sunday, God's Day for Christians, that will be left to the church. You'll have the usual church services, church sermons, and then the celebration of the fourth is delayed till the fifth. Now this tradition is then picked up by and adopted by abolitionists as a kind of, way of turning the July 4 into a counter July 4. So they then tend to celebrate the fourth on the fifth, even in years when the fourth doesn't fall on a Sunday. But for instance, Frederick Douglass's 1852, oration is delivered on a Monday, on the fifth, not on the fourth. So, there is a very strong sense that the orations are really a political occasion. They are an occasion for, reflecting on the present and future of the American Republic on the state of American politics and world politics, not an occasion for kind of moral reflection. So there is a pretty clear distinction in their minds. Now whether that, you know, whether one could say that still holds now, probably not. But for nineteenth century eighteenth and nineteenth century, listeners and speech givers, they're very clear that these are not sermons. This is something different.

00:34:41 Andrew Keen: What are your plans for July 4, Nathan?

00:34:47 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Well, I will actually be ironically, out of the country, but in the other, the other place with the red, white, and blue flag in France.

00:34:58 Andrew Keen: Well, that may get you banned. If anyone hears, you won't be allowed back into the country. Will there be orations? Okay. So you're you're missing it. I'll be here. I'll be in San Francisco. I don't suppose there'll be many orations here. There'll be fireworks. Is the tradition still alive in the America of 2026?

00:35:21 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Well, people still give orations. It's not unheard of. My, wonderful dissertation adviser, Eric Foner, told me that he once gave an oration in his little the little town in Connecticut where he lives part of the time. So it certainly exists. What is different is really after 1876. So 1876 is kind of a turning point. In 1876, congress, for the first time, asks for, towns and cities to, give historical orations. That is not the kind of traditional, what had been the tradition kind of orations about the state of American politics, about the state of what was going on now, but to really describe the history of their towns or cities. And there's a huge number of these orations given you can see on the website that we were looking at, earlier July 4, July 4 orations.org. There you can see, the numbers in 1876, about tenfold increase. But after that, the tradition really kind of, dies out. And there are a number of causes for that, but, the last chapter of the book looks at some, number of orations in the early nine early twentieth century, mid late twentieth century. And there just isn't this kind of density of, of oratorical performance, and there's not the same kind of conversation, kind of dialogue among different orators. So even if there are still orations, they're much more isolated performances now than they were during that first century when there was really a kind of living tradition, that had a lot of people talking. You know, one order would, you know, would refer to a previous year's oration. It's clear that they're listening to one another's orations and imitating the form and arguing with each other. So that really that really disappears.

00:37:08 Andrew Keen: Does that just suggest that this revolution tradition has fizzled out? When you think of Independence Day now, we think of a very sad Bruce Springsteen song about deindustrialization, unemployment, the dysfunctionality of relationship between boys and men. Can we just assume, Nathan I mean, you the title of your book is The Long Revolution, but has The Long Revolution really now ended in 2026?

00:37:36 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Right. Well, this is the question that I try, you know, raise in the last in the epilogue. In some ways, it seems obvious that the revolution is over. Right? If it wasn't over in 1783, it was over in 1790 or 1800 or 1815. You can sort of point to a set of events, that you know, various possible events or at the very latest, maybe it's the it's the civil war. And that's certainly the position of orators after the civil war. They really say this marks the end of the revolution. And I do think that's, you know, a reasonable position to take. On the other hand, you know, if one takes seriously what these orators say, in 1870, the order of William Everett in Boston says the or the revolution is not over because the truths of the declaration are not as yet worked out. And the context in which he says that is in a dispute, a debate over, immigration policy. He's talking about, in the passage that leads up to that. He's talking about Chinese exclusion, the policy in the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties of preventing people from China, from coming to The United States. Sound familiar? Mhmm. So, you know, in that sense, the debates which are, which are part of the debate about the declaration, about whether the declarations guarantees of rights to everyone are in fact, or the inalienable rights of mankind, whether those are, override one might say the ideas of national sovereignty that are also in the declaration. Right. The kind of debate over the different voices in the declaration between the voice of universal rights, the voice of the rights of man and the voice, of sovereign power. You know, that's still very much underway today in the courts, in the streets. And so in that sense, is the revolution still underway? Certainly the questions of the revolution are still being debated. Certainly the contours of the revolution and how we're going to say, this is what it is. This is what, it means. That's very much still, I think, in debate today, and I think will remain so.

00:39:49 Andrew Keen: Well, I'm gonna be very kind to you, Nathan. I'm not gonna require an oration, but I would like to end with just an idea of what that oration might say. Would you would it be a an MLK style bending history or American history, at least, naturally bending towards justice? Is that what your oration would be about if you? And you're gonna be in Europe, maybe in France, so, you'd stand up in Paris or somewhere else and make this oration. I'm not sure everyone would know what you're talking about. But would it be an MLK style history, American history bending towards justice, and that's what the revolution is, and it never ends? Not no end of history, no Fukuyama thesis at the end?

00:40:34 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Well, in a way, I think the MLK, you know, the we're talking about, you know, basically the, you know, the sort of Martin Luther King version of the American Revolution. That version does have an end. It's an optimistic, you know, a tempered optimism, but an optimism. I don't know that I, I don't think that the state of the republic is catastrophic, as I think some of my peers on

00:41:03 Andrew Keen: my Some of you. You got a nice blurb from Mark Lilla, who's been on the show before, who talks about a low, dishonest period in our history. This surprisingly timely book reminds us of our responsibilities. So, a lot of people think we're in a low, dishonest period, of course.

00:41:20 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Well, I think I think we can I think we can say that we're in a we're in a very difficult period? I think that's and I think that people agree on that left and right at this point. I mean, people may feel that, differently about the current administration or the last administration and whether it's pointing us in the right direction. But I think, the sense that we're in a period of a very difficult moment is pretty universal. So I think what I would do in a way if I were giving an oration is I would try to actually reflect on and reflect the way in which generations of orators wrestled with that problem too. I mean, I think part of what an a history can bring to the table is to say, you know, as early as eighteen o five, you had orators getting up there, eighteen o five, not even twenty something years, hence, you know, twenty barely twenty years after, American independence is recognized by Great Britain, getting up there and saying, you know, this is over. The Republic is over. We've had it. So there's a there is a tradition itself of kind of, you know, calling it as the calling it the end times. And I think part of what the oratorical tradition can remind us of, is that the power to engage in self criticism, the power we have to really talk to ourselves about it. And, you know, I wish in a way, and this now we will get to my idealism, I suppose. You know, part of what I think is really amazing about these orations is they provide a kind of forum for debates about American politics, and about the right way for America, and maybe the world to move forward, at difficult times. And, you know, it would be wonderful if we had, a forum that involved people really digging in for, you know, God help us, an hour at a time, you know, making the case for, I don't know, reform, even something is something that seems silly now, like anti, you know, temperance, like anti alcohol, propaganda. Still the kind of the depth and the intensity of that commitment, I would love to see that kind of intensity of dialogue in the public square. And I think I think we are missing that. But, you know, good luck getting the smartphone generation of which I count myself, you know, to listen to an hour and a half long speech. I mean, is that possible? That's where I get less optimistic.

00:43:47 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Or you're gonna be lucky to get a minute and a half. Well, on that, oration of orations note, congratulations, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, on important new history books. So many good histories are being written of America these days, and this is one of them. The long revolution creating a United States after 1776, built around the tradition of giving orations on July 4. Happy Independence Day even if you spend it in France, Nathan. Thank you so much.

00:44:20 Nathan Perl-Rosenthal: Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. It was great.