Pomp, Pageantry and a Parade: Celebrating the Constitution’s Centennial
Written by Peter Parker in the Features category and the Winter 1988 issue Topics in this article: 23rd Regiment New York National Guards, 8th Regiment Pennsylvania National Guards, Brick Makers' Association, Civic and Industrial Procession, Constitutional Centennial Commission, D. J. Kennedy, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Frederick Gutekunst, Governor Foraker, Hampton L. Carson, historical floats, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Iron Workers, James A. Beaver, John A. Kasson, John Byrd, John Fitch, John T. Bailey and Company, Joseph Hopkins, Knights of the Golden Eagle, Metal Workers, military marches, Mrs. Grover Cleveland, music, parades, Patriotic Order of Sons of America Valley Forge, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Carpenters' Company, Philip H. Sheridan, Pres. Grover Cleveland, speeches, U. S. Constitution, writersWith the thunder of a one hundred gun naval salute at precisely ten o’clock on the morning of Thursday, September 15, 1887, the nation’s centennial celebration of the adoption of the United States Constitution opened with great fanfare in Philadelphia. The booming cannon blast from a naval squadron on the Delaware River launched three jubilant days of parades, military marches, patriotic speeches, testimonial dinners, pageants and related festivities. Pres. Grover Cleveland joined a million and a half Americans, members of Congress and foreign dignitaries in the grand celebration. It was a remarkable demonstration for a nation that only five years earlier had thought so little of its principal founding document that the original Constitution was kept folded in a small tin box and ignominiously relegated to a closet of the State Department’s library in Washington, D.C.
Until the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, most Americans thought of the Declaration of Independence as the central symbol of their freedoms. The Constitution was little understood by most citizens and still less read or studied. Indeed, there were many predictions of failure during the frantic ten months of preparation by the Constitutional Centennial Commission, headed by former Congressman John A. Kasson of Iowa. Because planning had begun so belatedly, some states, not receiving their formal invitations to participate until June 15, 1887, refused to participate. Ohio’s Governor Foraker, for instance, advised Kasson, “Before we were invited to take any part in the celebration, our General Assembly had adjourned. We are, consequently without any legislation, or appropriation to enable us to do anything …” Alaska’s territorial governor cited a different reason: “Alaska being denied all the rights guaranteed to the other states … by the Constitution … feels she would be entirely out of place.”
Fortunately, Kasson was but a figurehead. The real work of organizing the centennial fell to a young Philadelphia attorney, Hampton L. Carson, the commission’s hard-working secretary (who later became president of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, where the official records of the Constitution’s centennial celebration are preserved). How Carson managed to smooth the ruffled feathers of Ohioans and Alaskans – not to mention many, many others – is beyond appreciation – but he did.
When September 15 arrived, residents and visitors in Philadelphia were treated to an extravaganza of parades and celebrations calculated to demonstrate, in Kasson’s words, the “practical and living forces” of the Constitution. The planners did their work well. The centennial sparked an outpouring of noise and a landslide of speeches that might be considered reverence for the Constitution, perhaps unmatched until the present-day bicentennial celebration. A “Civic and Industrial Procession” – with forests of flying banners, one hundred and fifty marching bands and fire wagons – paraded down Broad Street, around City Hall (then under construction), and returned on the other side of the street. The marching units passed each other in opposite directions past throngs of cheering citizens seated in wooden bleachers, perched in windows and balanced on rooftops and carriages. Every three or four blocks, medical stations, connected by telegraph, tended to the exuberant and exhausted. Fortunately, horses provided most of the transportation and many units were accompanied by scavengers, armed with shovels and brooms, to see that the route of this grand march remained pristine.
At nine o’clock that morning, the marshal of the Civic and Industrial Procession stepped off from Broad and Dauphin Streets, followed by twenty-three divisions, each of which showcased some industry that had flourished under the U.S. Constitution. The banner leading the procession depicted a chastely draped Columbia, pointing with her right hand to the rugged life of 1787 and with her left to prosperity engendered by the landmark document in 1887.
Historical floats – portraying the battle of Lexington, the Declaration of Independence, George Washington’s Revolutionary War headquarters at Valley Forge and the surrender of the British – abounded. Present, too, were foreign visitors in native costumes representing the nations from which America’s first settlers originated. But the real business of the parade was business; the procession was a reprise of the 1876 Centennial on wheels. Floats and marching units celebrated progress: railroads, Baldwin locomotives, Disston saws, metal and woodworkers, roofers, plumbers, and masons were led by Philadelphia’s Carpenters Company, the city’s oldest trade organization. Most featured a “then and now” theme, such as that of the first float of the Iron Workers, described as an old-fashioned blacksmith shop, with the old leather bellows, blown now and then by the “smithy” upon the fire in the forge: the “smithy” and his helper illustrating the old method of making ornamental iron work …. On the other side was a modern shop, with improved bellows tools.
The marshal’s general orders for the parade gives no idea of how long the spectators would have to stand, but they did provide that every twenty minutes between 10:20 A.M. and 4:20 P.M. the parade would halt for five minutes to permit traffic to cross the parade route. An exhilarating but enervating day on Broad Street!
The following day, Friday, September 16, Gen. Philip H. Sheridan, the dashing Union cavalry hero of the Civil War and then commander of the U.S. Army, led nearly twenty-four thousand Army troops, militias from the states that could find the funds to send representatives, and units of the National Guard that marched and countermarched for six and a half hours along the Broad Street parade route, The massive military display was described as “the largest body of American soldiers ever assembled” -a fitting display of the nation’s military prowess.
Newspapers of the day found, however, the behavior of the president’s wife curious and, perhaps, not at all appropriate. Mrs. Cleveland, believing that her husband was at odds with a group of Civil War veterans marching under the banner of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), ostentatiously turned her chair so that she presented her back to the GAR when it marched past. It seems the president had forgotten to tell his wife that he settled his feud with the organization.
On Saturday, September 17, the actual one hundredth anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution by the Convention and the final day of the commemorative celebrations, the parade moved east along Chestnut Street to Independence Hall where President Cleveland shared a huge reviewing stand with assorted dignitaries, foreign ambassadors and a two thousand voice boys choir which sang The March of the New Columbia to the music of John Philip Sousa’s famed Marine Band.
The platform was decorated with a photographic replica of the Constitution and the actual chair from which George Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention one century before. Cleveland echoed a remark, attributed to Benjamin Franklin at the signing of the Constitution, comparing the nation’s fortunes with the rising-sun motif on the crest of Washington’s chair. “We stand today,” the president said, “on the spot where this rising sun emerged from political night and darkness.” Fortunately for the president, whose frame was substantial, his remarks were short – not the case with the other orators of the day – and he was able to resume his seat while the proceedings ground on. The choir sang Hail Columbia, originally written by Philadelphian Joseph Hopkinson with new words in twelve verses by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and The Star Spangled Banner.
Finally, Protestant and Catholic divines offered prayers and a benediction: the ceremony and America’s first century of constitutional government ended.
This article is the fourth in a special five-part series commemorating the bicentennial of the United States Constitution.
For Further Reading
Carson, Hampton, ed. One Hundredth Anniversary of the Promulgation of the Constitution of the United States. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1889.
Davis, Susan G. Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth Century Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.
Kammen, Michael. A Machine That Would Go Itself. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Company, 1986.
Peter J. Parker, a resident of Germantown, has served three years as director of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, a repository of nearly fifteen million manuscripts, rare books, artworks and artifacts documenting more than three centuries of American and Pennsylvania history. Prior to his appointment as director, he served for thirteen years as the society’s chief of manuscripts. He also taught history at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York. The author received his bachelor of arts degree in history from Harvard University in 1956 and was awarded his master of arts degree in American history by the University of Pennsylvania. His articles have appeared in American Archivist, Business History Review, American Historical Review, William and Mary Quarterly, Journal of American History, Winterthur Portfolio and Pennsylvania History. He is a member of numerous organizations, including the American Association of Museums, Society of American Archivists, Organization of American Historians and the Association of Canadian Archivists.