July 4th was fully embraced by the Communist Party in the Popular Front era, with this editorial even celebrating Daniel Boone and the violent, illegal settlement of Native lands as revolutionary acts.

‘Communists Are Inheritors of Revolutionary Traditions of ’76’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 13 No. 160. July 4, 1936.

Philadelphia, on July Fourth, 160 years ago today, the bells rang out the message of “Revolution.” Their peals spread from hamlet to hamlet, in the slow motion of that time, throughout the thirteen colonies, the announcement that a life or death struggle had begun. Their echoes startled a world dominated by kings and the “mercantile system” of the then ruling classes.

The courageous representatives of the American people declared themselves FREE. They decreed the end of kings. They proclaimed the death of the “mercantile system,” which bound them hand and foot to the whims and wishes of the British ruling class. They declared themselves rebels against What Was, the makers of What Was to Be.

The Declaration of Independence was not an isolated incident. It was a crowning act in a great struggle that had gone on for years.

The British ruling classes had decreed that the American people could not advance beyond the Appalachian Mountains. Through Daniel Boone and his colleagues, these decrees had been defied, opening the way for Revolution. The British ruling classes had declared that rules and regulations should be imposed on the American people of that time, which would prevent the expansion of that people at the expense of British trade. Through John Hancock and men of his type, these rules and regulations had been smashed, leading up to the “seditious” Boston Tea Party.

Now was America dedicated to the advancement of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for “ALL MEN.”

IT is deeply significant and appropriate that on this 160th anniversary of this revolutionary act, that the Communist Party of the United States should open its Presidential campaign for 1936. Who are the inheritors of the American revolutionary traditions, proclaimed for the first time by Thomas Jefferson in Philadelphia in 1776? It is they, the Communists, who fight for the establishment of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for the masses of the people, Negro and white, in the great crisis of our time. It is they who stand out against the destruction of our liberties by the Benedict Arnolds and Tories of 1936, in order that through liberty Socialism may be triumphant. In our time, it is the Communist Party which carries on the traditions enunciated by Jefferson for his day and age.

In 1776 the Tories sought by every vicious means to defeat the revolutionary movement. They stood with the kings and with the ruling classes. One hundred and sixty years later, it is the Hearsts, the “Liberty” League and the Republican Party who seek once more the destruction of the liberties of the American people. They bring forward the black menace of fascism. They are the perverters of the American revolutionary tradition, distorting the principles of the dead Jefferson for their reactionary ends.

WHO would Jefferson support today in the great struggle of this hour? He would stand with the champions of the rights of the Negro people, for those who fight for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” for the mass of the American people, for those who battle for the civil liberties for which Jefferson fought–the Communist Party. Today the Communist Party will open fire against the modern Tories, the prototypes of the bitter enemies of Jefferson. The Tories of his day put a bounty on Jefferson’s head, declaring him a traitor to the rulers of 1776. The filthy Tories of 1936 likewise breathe fire against the “seditious” Communists of this time. In this attack, they plan to destroy all rights of the American working people.

In the Ninth Convention of the Communist Party, the new call to battle of the people for their freedom was proclaimed. Communism was again declared to be Twentieth Century Americanism. To defend those civil liberties, through which the people can advance to Socialism, the Party called again for a wide People’s Front, in the National Farmer-Labor Party. It declared that the present battle is between Fascism and Democracy in America, and that the Communists hold aloft the standard of Democracy in such a struggle.

ON THIS July Fourth, the spirit of Jefferson walks abroad in the land. The hopes set down in the Declaration of Independence are being fought for. When the “new John Brown of Ossawatomie,” Earl Browder, speaks at Cleveland and at Akron this afternoon, when the vice-presidential candidate, James W. Ford, representative of the Negro people, delivers his address, when the other Communist speakers raise the banner of the Party in the 1936 campaign–the flame lighted in 1776 will be renewed, in the gigantic crisis of our day, in the terms which 1936 requires.

That flame shall not be extinguished. The Tories in the Hearst-“Liberty” League-Republican combine. shall be defeated, as were those of 1776. The Communist cause, in the fight for liberty to advance to Socialism, will be triumphant. The mass of the American people can celebrate this July Fourth in no more vital way than by dedicating themselves to the achievement of this outcome in the present crisis.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1936/v13-n160-NY-jul-04-1936-DW-Q.pdf