The Nation: The Neo-Revolutionists

At the start, the plans for the nation's bicentennial celebrations had an admirable future cast−model cities, rapid transit systems, the formulation of new goals. But with 1976 rapidly approaching, those dreams have largely dissolved into straightforward nostalgia. Leading the parade into the past will be Charleston, S.C., which has plans for a series of son et lumière historical tableaux and a 500-acre display site for revolutionary memorabilia, including a naval museum. The purpose: to remind the nation of the city's own illustrious role in the struggle for independence.

Convinced that schoolbooks give short shrift to the South, the area's historians point out that the first large-scale patriot victory was won at Charleston's Fort Moultrie, that most of the war's combat took place in South Carolina, and that the southern colony sent more supplies than any other to the beleaguered garrison of Boston. Charleston, they remind us, even had its own tea party−seven kegs overboard.

Not content simply to reapportion the glory, Charleston's planners have defiantly set a revisionist date for Independence Day−July 2, 1776, the date the Declaration was approved (it was adopted on the 4th). They note that John Adams, the following day, wrote his wife that the second day of July "will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival"−well, in South Carolina, anyway.