New Jersey's memory of the Revolution unfolded through commemorations that both celebrated independence and reflected the state's complicated loyalties. By the 1826 Jubilee, festivities had settled into fireworks, parades, and bonfires. A notable collection of Fourth of July orations, spanning the late eighteenth century through 1960 and held at the Alexander Library at Rutgers University, documents how the holiday's meaning shifted across generations. The 1876 Centennial featured, fittingly for New Jersey, a reproduction of a Loyalist officer's belt plate, a reminder of the state's divided wartime identity. In the nineteenth century, suffragist Lucy Stone quoted the Declaration's preamble before the New Jersey state assembly to argue that taxation without representation applied equally to women. She was invoking a remarkable and largely forgotten precedent: New Jersey had briefly allowed property-owning women to vote from 1776 until 1807, when that right was revoked.
Interviewees
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William Krakower
- Resource Interpretive Specialist, Princeton Battlefield State Park
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Todd Braisted
- Royal Provincial Research
