What Are We Celebrating on July 4?
By Carole Hornsby Haynes June 28, 2026 Abbeville Institute
On July 4, Americans across the nation celebrate with cookouts, parades, and fireworks. Yet how many really understand just what we are celebrating? What has changed about our nation since that day in 1776? What can Americans do to help restore our founding principles?



“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
Juneteenth is now a federal holiday celebrating the end of slavery. Although Juneteenth has been often celebrated as the end of slavery, the fact is that slavery continued to exist for nearly six months after this date, including in Kentucky and two Northern states, Delaware and New Jersey.
For the past three years, Texas Houston Independent School District (HISD) superintendent, Mike Miles, has endured widespread scathing criticism, including accusations of ongoing racism and unfairness. Well known progressive education researcher
Not so long ago, historians wrote about the Civil War as a conflict between the North and South over tariffs. Now we are bombarded with propaganda that the war was between the “good” North and the “evil” South over slavery.