{"id":20593,"date":"2016-04-07T15:59:28","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T19:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/?p=20593"},"modified":"2022-03-28T11:11:56","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T15:11:56","slug":"grand-federal-procession","status":"publish","type":"egp_essays","link":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/essays\/grand-federal-procession\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Federal Procession"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three hours long and a mile-and-a-half in length, the Grand Federal Procession was an ambitious act of political street theater, scripted by federalist supporters of the newly ratified U.S. Constitution and performed in the streets of Philadelphia on the Fourth of July 1788. From its commencement at Third and South Streets to its conclusion on Bush Hill north of the city center, the procession involved an estimated 22,000 Philadelphians: 5,000 men in the parade, with a vastly more diverse crowd of 17,000 men, women, and children watching from streets and windows, fences and roofs. Organized by rank and occupation, the marchers were roughly divided between federalist gentlemen (bankers, merchants, members of the Marine and Manufacturing Associations) and thousands of artisan-mechanics who, as the city\u2019s producing class, were central to the ideology of federalism.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia\u2019s was not the first federal procession in 1788. The ceremonial template had been set in Boston (on February 8), Baltimore (May 1), and Charleston (May 27), where shipbuilding craftsmen celebrated their states\u2019 ratifications of the Constitution with processions that put artisans at their center and featured a \u201cFederal Ship\u201d pulled by horses through the streets. While ratification was celebrated around the country, federal processions occurred in urban seaports where artisans had become allied with federalist merchants after years of economic adversity caused by the recession that followed the Revolution. The processions communicated an expectation shared by urban artisans and merchant-capitalists alike, that the Constitution would \u201clift all boats\u201d by reviving trade and stabilizing financial instruments (such as debt financing and banking) degraded by a lethargic economy under the Articles of Confederation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The
The “grand federal edifice,” pictured in replica here, was the work of artist and naturalist Charles Willson Peale, who also played a key role in planning the route of the parade, providing costume advice, and devising slogans for each of the groups participating in the procession. (USHistory.org<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Philadelphia, however, the goal was to seize the political and national center for the city with a \u201cGrand\u201d Procession on the Fourth of July that would supersede all the rest. Taking place after the Constitution had reached the necessary ratification by nine states, supporters sought to demonstrate that the national superstructure had been flat under the Articles of Confederation; the federal Union would be a \u201cgrand federal edifice,\u201d raised from the center to more elevated and stable height.\u00a0 The \u201cold boat\u201d was unsound. A new ship of state, raised in Philadelphia\u2019s shipyards, would succeed in global commerce.<\/p>\n

The Order of March<\/h3>\n

The procession opened by linking federalism with colonial settlement, as twelve \u201caxe-men\u201d in costume clearing the road for \u201ccivilization\u201d and for the parade itself. Federalist gentlemen followed, with silk flags marking key dates (1776, 1783, 1787) recalling the nation\u2019s historical birth in war, accompanied by nine corps of infantry and cavalry demonstrating the police power of city troops. Then, the \u201cConstitution\u201d rolled into view in the form of an American eagle, thirteen feet high, pulled by six horses, with a replica of the text signed in gold by \u201cthe people.\u201d Next came the \u201cgrand federal edifice,\u201d or \u201cnew roof.\u201d A neoclassical temple, thirty-six feet in height and supported by thirteen columns, it epitomized the federalist ideal of an elevated center raised by and over \u201cthe people.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the first half of the Grand Federal Procession featured allegorical floats and military troops, the second half was an extended pun on collective nation-making, with seventeen of some forty-five trades literally producing their respective commodities on horse-drawn stages, occasionally tossing objects (such as printed poems and baked bread) into the crowd. The joke was obvious. In a mass spectacle of American manufacturing, Philadelphia\u2019s procession associated national assembly and political representation with the assembly and consumption of commodities. The shipbuilding<\/a> crafts (mast makers, caulkers, sail makers, and carpenters) walked at the head of the trades with the Federal Ship Union<\/em>, mounted with twenty guns. As the single most theatrical float of the day, the ship was noisy, inclusive, and large, with a sheet of blue canvas to simulate water and conceal wheels and machinery below. Commanding great applause, it functioned as a stage upon which a crew of twenty-five, including four young boys in costume, performed \u201csea ceremonies\u201d such as\u00a0 \u201ccalling anchor\u201d and \u201ctrimming sails to the wind\u201d whenever the ship turned a street corner.<\/p>\n

\"A
This silk banner was carried by Thomas Leiper for the Tobacconists of Philadelphia in the Grand Federal Procession. (Library Company of Philadelphia<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The majority of craftsmen walked in the street. Journeymen and apprentice rope makers followed masters with spinning tools (\u201cclouts\u201d) in hand. Coach painters carried palettes. Bricklayers marched with trowels, their flag representing a \u201cFederal city rising\u201d beneath a rising sun, with the motto \u201cboth buildings and rulers are the works of our hands.\u201d Three hundred shoemakers in white aprons walked with a horse-drawn shop with six men making shoes. Hundreds of blacksmiths, tinsmiths, and nailers accompanied a working forge, drawn by nine horses, where they turned \u201cold swords\u201d into \u201cplough-irons,\u201d forged pliers, and sold nails along the route. Their motto: \u201cBy hammer in hand, all arts do stand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conflicts Beneath the Surface<\/h3>\n

Despite the air of celebration, connections among American industry, settler colonialism, and state violence were never far from the surface. The United States was already fitfully at war with Shawnee, Wyandot, Delaware, and Haudenosaunee of the interior, who resisted white settler expansion beyond the Ohio River. In the Grand Federal Procession, the gunsmiths followed the biscuit bakers on a horse-drawn stage dubbed the \u201cfederal armory.\u201d And near the end of the procession the famous armorer Daniel King (1731-1806) directed a brass-founder\u2019s float, with furnace in full blast.\u00a0 King\u2019s howitzers had helped to win the Revolutionary War, and he contributed a three-inch howitzer<\/a> for firing at the procession\u2019s closing ceremonies on Bush Hill, dubbed \u201cUnion Green.\u201d Eventually, King howitzers would be sent to the Ohio Valley, where they furnished forts in the federalist struggle to keep Indian resistance at bay, hundreds of miles west of Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

Details about the Grand Federal Procession come almost entirely from federalist print publicity: an \u201cAccount\u201d by Francis Hopkinson<\/a> (1737-91), chair of the organizing committee, and \u201cObservations\u201d by physician Benjamin Rush<\/a> (1746-1813). According to Hopkinson, only six women rode in the parade, all of them on a float loaded with machinery for textile production. One unidentified woman ran the spinning jenny, while five others\u2014the daughters and wife of calico printer John Hewson<\/a> (1744-1821)\u2014worked at \u201cpenciling a piece of very neat sprigg\u2019d chintz of Mr Hewson\u2019s design.\u201d Women also provided invisible labor behind the procession. Sally Bache<\/a> (1743-1808), daughter of Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), created the \u201cflesh-coloured\u201d costume, blue cap, sash and feather wings worn by actor John Durang (1768-1822) on the printer\u2019s float. There, in the character of the god Mercury<\/a>, he tossed copies of an ode written by Hopkinson, outlining the federalist fantasy of a global stage on which \u201can empire rises\u201d before the eyes of a watching (and reading) world.<\/p>\n

Oh for a muse of fire !\u00a0 to mount<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The skies,<\/em><\/p>\n

And to a list\u2019ning world proclaim \u2013<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Behold! Behold! An empire rise!<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 An era new, Time as he flies,<\/em><\/p>\n

Hath enter\u2019d in the book of Fame. <\/em><\/p>\n

As a celebration of productivity the Federal Procession (like the Constitution itself) implicitly raised while sidestepping the fact of slavery. In a single, oblique reference to race, Rush cited \u201cking cotton\u201d<\/a> and celebrated textile manufacturing as a site of national integration, uniting slave labor in the southern states with wage workers in the north. \u201cCOTTON,\u201d Rush enthused, \u201cmay be cultivated in the southern, and manufactured in the eastern and middle states\u2026 Hence will rise a bond of union to the states, more powerful than any article of the New Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Constitution had been sharply contested. Pennsylvania had ratified it by a vote of only 46 to 23. By taking the streets for federalism, the Grand Federal Procession made ratification seem inevitable and popular. At parade\u2019s end, marchers and spectators converged on the lawn of Bush Hill<\/a>, the estate of William Hamilton (1745-1813) in the vicinity of Seventeenth Street and Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, for a citywide feast that consumed 4,000 pounds of beef, 2,600 pounds of ham, and 1,000 barrels of strong beer. In an open-air spectacle, at once solemn ceremony and mass entertainment, thousands of Philadelphians who were not actually present at the writing or ratification of the Constitution found themselves assembled as \u201cthe people,\u201d by a grand federal act of framing, forging, and fabrication.<\/p>\n

Laura Rigal<\/strong> is Associate Professor in the Departments of English and American Studies at the University of Iowa.\u00a0 She is the author of <\/em>The American Manufactory: Art, Labor, and the World of Things in the Early Republic (Princeton University Press, 1998). (Author information current at time of publication.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three hours long and a mile-and-a-half in length, the Grand Federal Procession was an ambitious act of political street theater, scripted by federalist supporters of the newly ratified U.S. Constitution and performed in the streets of Philadelphia on the Fourth of July, 1788.\u00a0 From its commencement at Third and South Streets to its conclusion on Bush Hill north of the city center, the procession involved an estimated 22,000 Philadelphians: 5,000 men in the parade, with a vastly more diverse crowd of 17,000 men, women, and children watching from streets and windows, fences and roofs. Organized by rank and occupation, the marchers were roughly divided between federalist gentlemen (bankers, merchants, members of the Marine and Manufacturing Associations) and thousands of artisan-mechanics who, as the city\u2019s producing class, were central to the ideology of federalism.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":20732,"template":"","egp_featured_subjects":[1991,2001,2011],"class_list":["post-20593","egp_essays","type-egp_essays","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","egp_featured_subjects-activism","egp_featured_subjects-commemorations-and-holidays","egp_featured_subjects-government-and-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_essays\/20593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_essays"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/egp_essays"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_essays\/20593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20877,"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_essays\/20593\/revisions\/20877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"egp_featured_subjects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philadelphiaencyclopedia.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/egp_featured_subjects?post=20593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}