150 years on

This July we’re celebrating our American semiquincentennial, 250 years on. And I’m thinking about our centennial summer, 1876.
Before I get to that, though, let me tell you about our bicentennial, 1976. This year everybody seems to be saying that was a time of great national unity, we rejoiced together, what a shame we’re so divided this year! Well, if we were less divided in 1976, it was only because we were all equally traumatized. Watergate and Nixon’s resignation were a big deal. Our president had LIED to us. “ Lies” and “lying” were words you heard like 20 times a day. Maybe there WAS some kinda unity because by the time Nixon resigned, his own party had turned against him, too. Billy Graham announced that when he heard the profanity-laced Oval Office tapes, he threw up, and that was IT— all Middle America ran gagging for the toilet. The country may have been pretty much of one mind in 1976, but it was NOT a happy, celebratory frame of mind. We were all hurt and ashamed.
Okay so back 100 years before that, to 1876. The cities were full of disabled Civil War veterans begging for a living. And the government was still occupying the South, had federal troops there. Imagine what the summer was like in the cities. A virulent political contest for the presidency between Tilden and Hayes was raging.
And the election when it occurred was a lot like 2000. Tilden won the popular vote, but there was still hope for Hayes because of the electoral college. It took 115 days to resolve it, and the appointment of a special Electoral Commission, which eventually awarded the Presidency to Hayes in exchange for his agreement to remove federal troops from the South. Whew! 115 days! The uncertainty over Bush/Gore only lasted 36 days, I was surprised to find, cuz it seemed SOOOO much longer at the time.
I didn’t remember ever hearing about 1926, our sesquicentennial. We held a World’s Fair to mark it, but, um, almost nobody came. President Coolidge apparently traveled around the country some, making speeches, but in general there doesn’t seem to have been much patriotic fervor that year. I think the country was in a period of generalized mourning, so many people had lost people they loved in WW I and far more in the flu epidemic.
Gore Vidal wrote a novel about our centennial year, titled 1876. It’s a great book like the rest of his American historical series.
My conclusion is, milestone birthdays are probably always at best bittersweet occasions for nations, just as they are for us humans. I was ecstatically happy this year when July 5 dawned and there had been no tragedies or attacks on July 4. And really, if you compare 2026 to 1926, 1876, 1976— it went off quite well!