Audio
Season 2, Episode 3: For the American People: The George Washington Bicentennial
Transcript
Dustin Baker
Hey everyone, my name is Dustin Baker. I'm the chief of interpretation at George Washington Birthplace National Monument and what you just heard was a piece of, “Father of the land we love,” and I'm actually holding a copy of the sheet music here in my hands. It has an illustrated picture of George Washington riding a horse. And beneath that image it says written for the American People by George M Cohan to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Washington. And on the back of the sheet music is a picture of something very familiar. It's the Memorial House Museum, and under that it says, Wakefield, Virginia, birthplace of George Washington. Now, the sheet music was issued by the United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission. And often when we in America hear bicentennial, we think of 1976. But in this instance, we're talking about 1932. And it's hard to imagine, but the bicentennial birth anniversary of George Washington was an enormous event. In fact, it was probably one of the largest national commemorative events in our country's history. And it's incredibly relevant to the park that we are all at. And I'm joined today by two park rangers who know a lot about the George Washington Bicentennial. So, joining us today is David Lassman and Jonathan Malriat.
Jonathan Malriat
So music and other performing arts was a big part of this bicentennial. I mean, we just listened to the chorus of “Father the Land We Love”. George M Cohen, the guy who wrote “Father of the Land We Love,” do you realize how big he is? He is truly a jack of all trades as a vaudevillian actor. He's an actor. He's a writer. He's a composer. He's a director. He's a producer. He wrote, produced, directed and appeared in over 50 musicals and plays. Some of the songs he wrote are ones that, commemoratively, we know as being like these almost linchpin ones, like You're a Grand Old Flag, he wrote that in 1906. Like, that's like one of the ones that we all know. And speaking of patriotic songs and the national anthem, it had been around parts of it had been around for a long time, but it was never actually codified as the national anthem until 1930s, during the bicentennial run up to it by Herbert Hoover. There's other very famous pieces, including probably one of the most iconic pieces and one of the most iconic parts from the Bicentennial, [Music Break] John Philip Sousa’s Bicentennial March. But it really goes to show even who is writing these at how large and important this was to the national image, because John Philip Sousa at that time is one of the, like number one composers.
David Lassman
Sousa, he would write the George Washington March in 1930. And in preparation for it and as he would tour the country with both his band and also, other bands, especially military bands, he would play it in preparation for the Bicentennial proper in 1932. Now the official of playing it occurred on George Washington's two hundredth birthday, which was February 22nd, 1932, and it was at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Now, that day, President Hoover walked into the, Capitol building where there's a joint session of the Congress, plus members of Supreme Court, foreign diplomats, military officers, the galleries were all filled to hear President Hoover speak. Now as Hoover walked in, Sousa was actually leading a small band of men in playing Hail to the Chief. Once Hoover was there, he would give a speech. And let me just give you one quote of what he said. He said, “Today the American people begin a period of tribute and gratitude to the man who we revere above all other Americans. Continuing until Thanksgiving Day, we will commemorate his birth in every home, every school, every church, in every community under our flag.” Hoover then went to continue saying that what they're doing today is, what he’s saying today is not a eulogy to George Washington, because no one can do a proper eulogy to George Washington. Instead a true eulogy to Washington is this mighty nation. He contributed more to its origins than any other man. The influence of his character and of his accomplishments has contributed to the building of human freedom and ordered liberty, not alone upon this continent but around all continents. Now Hoover will speak for about a half hour. And when he was done, he would march out of the Capitol building to the east side of the Capitol, where they had a large plaza. And as he reached the plaza, 10,000 schoolkids and 2000 adults sang the song America. It was simulcast, and they encouraged people all over the country, all over the world, even ham operators were sharing the song cast to sing America at the same time. Once the song was over, there be some speechifying by this official and that official. But the true highlight of the ceremony on the East Plaza was the playing of Sousa's George Washington Bicentennial March. And what he did that day was not just have the Marine Band, which he often played with. He had members of the Army Band and the Navy Band. He had a large combined band playing the song. Now this would be the next to last song/appearance Sousa ever performed.
Jonathan Malriat
Yeah, he passes away, just not even a month later.
David Lassman
Two weeks.
Jonathan Malriat
Yeah, he passes away. And Sousa is one of the preeminent writers and composers of marches. So this being his last hurrah is fitting for this bicentennial, in a way.
David Lassman
Now, one more little account with this march of Sousa's the George Washington Bicentennial March, I found, fittingly as tribute is two months later, the West High School in Salt Lake City. The graduating class used the march as their entry march for the graduation. They were the next generation using the George Washington Bicentennial to start their lives.
Dustin Baker
So this is just one example of how big and grand the George Washington Bicentennial was. And it was much more than that. I mean, even in your hometown, you probably heard these songs over the radio. Children were singing these songs in school, being issued sheet music. People were wearing officially licensed costuming. And in the sheet music, I have in my hand, at the bottom, it says, issued by the United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission, Washington, D.C., and then then lower right-hand corner, it says, Copyright 1931, Saul Bloom. So, David, tell us a little bit about Saul Bloom.
David Lassman
Now, Saul Bloom is quite a character. He was born in 1870 and lived much of his initial youth in Illinois. And he, as a young boy, was fascinated by theater and got jobs in theater, working as a singer in a madrigal band and choir. And he was subsequently and with his family, moved to San Francisco. And that's where truly Saul Bloom blossomed. He would, get a job, working in the theater, and he would basically say, you know what? I can make some side money hustling in theater. So if a person needed a snack, a person needed a button placed on their shirt collar, almost anything, he said yes. He was basically a walking department store, and he charged three times what everything cost. Plus, he asked for a tip. He was a young goer. In really many ways, Saul Bloom was almost a Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn type character. Always working an angle, always being successful and doing it with a smile on his face. And yet, for all general purposes, he had no education. He skipped the schooling as a young boy, and everything was self-learned. Now, that being said, a few years later, he made his way to New York City and he ran a music business. He ran a couple other business. He ran real estate but due to the fluke death of a local congressman, he ran for office, and he won the election by 145 votes. Now, anyone knows anything about New York elections in the early 20th century, it might have been a questionable election. But he won, and he found himself in Congress. And with his background in public relations, entertainment and with everything else, when the George Washington Bicentennial was being organized, they looked around Congress and said, who has experience dealing with this type of thing? He was the one man who did. So Saul Blum became the P.T. Barnum of the George Washington Bicentennial Commission.
Jonathan Malriat
And so I know he actually had a second chairman, but that second chairman, actually, a man by the name of Grant actually will step down within a couple of months. So for almost six plus years, Bloom is leading the charge on this whole process, and it's impressive what they're able to do. In some ways, it's odd because one of Bloom's like rises in his history is the Chicago's World Fair, and World's fairs were really big deals, big expos. So why didn't they do that for this? And it was intentional, when they were created as a committee, they intended to not do a singular event. That was like in their founding, that we did not want to have this singular event. We wanted to reside in every American and be like part of their nationwide experience. So versus the World's Fair, where you had to travel to visit this, they wanted this to occur everywhere. And it did. The report that they completed in 1933 shows all of the different programs that they had. They did programs in large cities, every town, they estimated by the end that they presented over 4 million programs, versus if they just did a World's Fair, it's two weeks, three weeks. And that's just in the United States. They actually did events all over the world that were connected to this program. That they either helped influence or that others did because of the influence of this committee. They did an estimate that there were 81 countries and or, territories of countries that had events, but like Italy, France, Algeria, there are hundreds of these programs all over just to celebrate George Washington. And a lot of that comes from not only the influence of Bloom, but even the influence of the name of George Washington himself. So the whole broader celebration was going to be, over the seven months occurring everywhere. But there were some things that stood out. There are events and things that even today, we can still see. So like a great example, that is where we're recording from, George Washington Birthplace National Monument. The dedication for this site was all in culmination for this 1932. They were wanting to have, to rebuild in their mind, the original home. So that is still part of the program. But there are other sites, other events.
David Lassman
I mean, there obviously are iconic places like Mount Rushmore, which was part of this, really this era of commemoration that was bracketed by the two world wars because you had parks and museums blossoming in the 1920s, largely because there was money to burn. And for the first time, it wasn't just the upper class who were having fun traveling and exploring, and doing things. So parks and museums would blossom, and the National Park Service would actually be part of that situation. So once more you have Mount Rushmore, you'd have Arlington House, which is a related to Washington family. And but more importantly, they really wanted to connect sites about George Washington and some folks proposed that they make a commemorative highway. It was to start at George Washington's birthplace, and the highway would go west to Ferry Farm in Fredericksburg, George Washington lives as a young man. It would continue north to Mount Vernon, where George Washington lived as an adult. And then, this highway would follow the Potomac River past Great Falls, where George Washington built one of the first major canals in North America. And then would go north through Maryland and Pennsylvania up to the Great Lakes, going past several sites where George Washington had experience during and visited during the French and Indian War. Now, originally this was going to be called the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway. Today we know it as the George Washington Parkway, and the main section goes from, Mount Vernon up along the Potomac River for about 25 miles. But they never made that multi, couple hundred-mile highway that they originally intended. Now, that being said, the goal still was to connect things about George Washington's life. So the Park Service expanded largely into history in the 1920s and 30s. And with Colonial Williamsburg, they wanted that, that battlefield where George Washington helped win the American Revolution, Yorktown battlefield. So there'll be dickering going back and forth to get the National Park Service to preserve these Washington sites, revolutionary sites, and American sites. Now, over time, more and more sites were built in this era of commemoration. But the point is, really, it was this opportunity, that was inspired by George Washington, that got the National Park Service really into interpreting American history.
Dustin Baker
And it kind of perfectly overlapped with Horace Albright's vision.
David Lassman
Yes. In fact, Horse Albright, who would be, I guess, the second director of the National Park Service, he was very much involved in, working with the National Park Service to get involved at George Washington's Birthplace and, and, and he would actually, while mostly known for expanding a lot of the historical and, natural sites out west, Horace Albright really was the one who made the dickering, the deal making, to get these smaller historic sites, the Morristown’s in New Jersey, where George Washington had his, one of his encampments during the revolution. He was the one who was really trying to get the Park Service beyond just, natural sites and a few Civil War battlefields, into actually telling the story of America.
Dustin Baker
So even if you're not really involved with or big on National Park history, the bicentennial is actually something that we see every day in our lives. It could, depend on, places you live, but it also could be the money in your pocket.
Jonathan Malriat
Yeah, it's interesting because we think about all the presidents are on our money. That was not always a thing. When we originally started off, coins were frequently representations of ideals. So you saw like Liberty on coins, you saw Justice on coins, you saw the images of eagles and bison. But real, specific individual people is something that takes a while to start develop, especially on coins. Paper money, it had been around for a long time, even back to the American Civil War. But coins, we get a different story and the one that ties direct with the Bicentennial is who the Bicentennial was celebrating, George Washington. So what coin do we all have in our pockets that's got George's face on it? It's the quarter, and today it's been such a part of quarters that that's the only thing we think about. The quarters always had George Washington, and it's tied to the Bicentennial. So the Bicentennial Commission actually wanted to create a $1 commemorative coin that was going to be special, one off, just printed in 1932, and that was it. Hoover actually vetoed it. And so to try recouping some of this because they already had this commission design already created, they want to do medals. So they decided, what else can we do. And it was decided to look at the quarter. And the quarter had Standing Liberty at the time. And they decided to change it up and use George Washington. Now the mint actually went for a different design. So it is interesting seeing that, yeah, it was just in some ways luck, but in other ways just the design that allowed it to survive 90 years to now. That we're still using a Washington quarter and it's just become ubiquitous with the quarter today. The design on it actually has only changed really only a couple times till we started the state, the state quarters and then the national park quarters. It was actually for another bicentennial that it gets changed and they put a colonial drummer on the back and talked about it being the bicentennial quarter on it.
David Lassman
Bicentennial of 1976!
Jonathan Malriat
Yeah. The 76th, yeah the 200th anniversary of United States. So it is interesting that the one time the quarter changed in its vast majority of its years was, it was created for a bicentennial and it got changed for a bicentennial.
Dustin Baker
People love bicentennials.
David Lassman
Now, one important aspect of the George Washington Bicentennial was the fact that, as Saul Bloom put it, He wanted everyone have connections with, with George Washington. He wanted George Washington accessible to everyone. And he wanted everyone to have essentially a souvenir of George Washington. And besides, coins like the quarter really, the only thing that was universally useful to everyone was postage stamps. Now, originally, they wanted to make a series of 18 postage stamps that would show, George Washington at different places all around his life. Starting obviously with the George Washington birthplace, going to a French and Indian war site, to American Revolution site, presidential sites, and eventually show a, a stamp showing his grave at Mount Vernon. But these panoramic shots of George Washington's stamps until they actually realized, were actually very busy and not well conceived. Instead, we're just going to make several stamps that will show, you see basically portraits of George Washington, and they go anywhere from a half cent stamp. Yes, they did have half cent stamps in those days, all the way up to ten cent stamps. And and once more of the stamps from the various values would go, and showing different phases of George Washington's life, going from his youth to his adulthood. Now, that being said, the most popular stamp, not surprisingly, was the two cent stamp because that was the major, major postage stamp for people to send mail in those days. So the other denominations were useful. But really, of the 7 million postage stamps that had George Washington's face on it in 1932, over half were the two cent stamp. Now, that being emphasized, the Bureau of Engraving would issue these stamps now on the on New Year's Day, 1932. Yes, traditionally, it's a federal holiday and nothing takes place but the post office in Washington, DC. They would release the stamps. They'd have 60,000 people in line. And waiting hours to buy the stamps. And everyone was buying multiples. And you're buying the complete set of all tens, all the stamps in the series, in many cases multiple times. And that first day they sold over 100,000 stamps, $100,000 in stamps, which is when you consider no stamp was worth more than ten cents, that was a lot of stamps. And they would end up, working through their lunch break, their dinner break. They finally closed the post office at midnight. By the end of the day, the postal employees were exhausted. Know what, they opened again the next day. By the end of January 2nd, when the stamps were available all across the country, $1 million in stamps were sold. Two days. Now, that would be, soon lead to stamps being becoming more popular, more used, and, even more stamps were sold on February 22nd, his birthday. And possibly the most unique thing done for his birthday was they made commemorative cache stamps, which were basically envelopes that had special imprints or a postmark and they did a 100,000 of these special envelopes at Mount Vernon. But the special imprint on the envelopes wasn't of Mount Vernon. It was showing George Washington's birthplace. And and once these caches were distributed, sold, everyone essentially had a collectible George Washington in their home, in their pocket. It was available to everyone. And so the stamps truly, in many ways, were the most democratizing of all the ways that George Washington was, honored and celebrated in North America. It wasn't expensive, collectible. It wasn't a rare collectible. It was an accessible collectible.
Jonathan Malriat
And for the post office that wasn't the only celebration that they did for the bicentennial. They also did a whole round the United States transit to celebrate all the places George had been. Now, they didn't do it the way George would have done it 200 years before then. They did it via plane. So the pilot of this is actually a very famous pilot today. At that time, he was a well-known aviator, the pilot was Major James H. Doolittle, today more well known for the Doolittle Raid during World War Two. But at that time he was a very accomplished pilot. And his flight that he's going to do, he's actually going to do this flight the day before Post Office Day, which was a celebratory day to celebrate in the post office itself and the Postal Service, was going to be done on July 25th. So just a couple months after the February 22nd start of the celebrations. But during the peak of it, and he's going to travel over 2600 miles and drop mail parcels that had those embossed caches, as you [David] were talking about, that were specific to this flight. And it showed on that envelope where the plane had gone throughout the whole trip. And one of those sites that was on it was Wakefield, which is the site that we’re at at least how it's called today, and was actually delivered to a postmistress who in here is recorded as Julia L Washington, or today we sometimes know her as Julia Washington Muse, who was the postmistress here actually underneath the Memorial Museum. So he's on a travel around and he'll also have flying with him not only a recorder, but also one of George Washington's, let's see if I get this right, great-great-great-grand niece on the flight with him, Miss Ann Madison Washington. So he does his whole flight, traveling all over, meeting with multiple people every time he stops and multiple photographs of this. He even meets with Saul Bloom outside of Washington, D.C. And it's a big celebration. There are even stamps from here that were in celebration for that event. And they marked some of those envelopes and it was this big celebration in its own way. Today, we actually still have in the Park collection some remnants from that initial flight. We actually have some of the packaging material for that parcel. So even today, it's part of the records and the stories that we protect and preserve here at the birthplace. And interestingly enough, if you really want to see the plane, the aircraft itself actually survives through today.
David Lassman
Lockheed Orion.
Jonathan Malriat
Lockheed Orion, yes! It’s a Lockheed Orion and that actual aircraft that he flew is in, ironically enough, it's in a museum in Switzerland.
Dustin Baker
[Laughter] So this bicentennial event was worldwide. Millions of people participating. And I think today it's just so hard to imagine seven years of planning, all of this work, to celebrate the 200th birthday of George Washington. So why do you think that this really resonated with people at the time? Why do you think this was such a huge event? Why do you think that people got swept up into wanting to celebrate and commemorate George Washington's legacy in life?
Jonathan Malriat
I think there's a lot of factors that go into it. One of them is we've reached a point in the 1930s and really the 1920s as a society, that we are getting a growing middle class that has time, like they can look at doing celebrations, they can look at doing different events and traveling. Another one in there is it is on the coattails of the 150th anniversary, so 1926, the 150th. So there is already a push towards that. There's other things going on. I mean, you also have the Colonial Revival movement is reaching its peak in this time period. So people are looking back at the colonial era. In their homes, in their esthetics that they're using. So that's almost like a perfect storm coming together of everything, allowing this upswell in interest.
David Lassman
I concur. I mean really you had the 150th anniversary of this battle, and that battle, the Declaration of Indepedence, going to the 150 anniversary of the victory at Yorktown, which was a direct lead in to George Washington's 200th birthday in 1932. And even as the depression was taking place, as you noted, so many people out of jobs and nothing and no money to spend. Parks, museums were largely free. And all this new parks, museums that were created, would act as relief, of distraction for the American public. And then you'd have the 150th anniversary of the Constitution Convention, 150th anniversary of George Washington's inauguration. And we were about, in 1941, to have the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Sadly, that event was canceled because the bombing at Pearl Harbor. And so this very commemorative era of the 1920s and 1930s was bracketed by the devastation of two world wars. You have the energy, the vitality of the roaring 20s. You have the hardships of the depression. But Americans, in truth, endured all of it. The wars, prosperity, the hardships. And that's what Washington himself did. That's what the continental soldiers did. It's part of our culture. Just say, being repeated over and over again.
Jonathan Malriat
Another one I was thinking about, talking about the in between the world wars, but also technology. In between the world wars, you have one technology that starts to be available to people in their homes that we start to see and it's radio. Radio is reaching the point where it's starting to be almost accepted in every home. You start to see it in gathering places, and it's starting to be starting to be used as a political mechanism. Herbert Hoover is pretty well known for doing these radio broadcasts as part of his campaign for his first term in office, in that 1928 or 1929 election run. So radio actually could be another big part for why it became so big, because we start seeing the broadcasts. Sol Bloom's 1930 almost inauguration of the broader program for the bicentennial, occurring a year and a half later, is on to be simultaneously broadcast all over the United States via radio. People could be anywhere and be able to connect to this event. And it's in many ways still a novelty. It's still something that not everyone has had access to. It's something that's new in their lifetime. I would say a good equivalent for us is smartphones. Smartphones are something that we've only in about a past decade have had access to, and yet it has become revolutionary in our ways to communicate and connect and the way we connect culturally. Social media has become such a big part of how we connect culturally in the same way, how in the 20s and 30s radio becomes that. So that's another one that could tie in with how the bicentennial movement came so big and became having this 8 million programs and presentations.
Dustin Baker
Yeah, one thing that everyone knows or might know what I'm talking about, with the iconic photograph of the workers sitting on the high beam on the New York City skyline eating lunch. I think on Rockefeller Center as it's being built and that image was taken in 1932. And it's just so interesting to me that as America was entering the modern age, collectively, we were looking back not to the bicentennial of George Washington's inauguration as president or the founding of the country, but of his birth, the origins of Washington and the beginning of his legacy.
Jonathan Malriat
So this Bicentennial Commission and the bicentennial celebrations of 1932, in many ways almost seem like they've vanished into obscurity. There are still remnants that we still see. I mean, we talked about the quarters that we all have. We talk about the parks that are still around, that are influenced and part of this celebration. But for the vast majority of us, it's something that we've never really heard of. And it's interesting because today we're approaching similar milestones. We talked about how they were approaching the American 150th anniversary, we’re next year, approaching the America 250th anniversary, and we're seeing the start of celebrations and start of planning here. We're part of the Northern Neck or NNK 250th commemoration and it's broader celebration. We have speakers that are been recurring talking about those colonial eras and talking about how it even impacts us today. And we're now only, what, seven years from George Washington's tricentennial, the 300th anniversary. And it'll be interesting to see, what do we do now? How do we celebrate? We talked about how in the 1930s, they made a conscious choice to do this, disseminated and disparate celebrations, not in a single one event, not in a single one day or time. What's going to happen now? Are we going to do the same, or are we going to have maybe a virtual celebration, because we're in a very different reality. They had radio and we talked about how radio was a part of their celebrations, the music, the broadcasts. Is that's going to be just slightly tweaked for us, are we going to have more of a virtual celebration, social media pushes? We're going to have to see what happens. I know here at the birthplace, we're already starting to look. We're already starting to plan and think how we are going to be a part of this.
Dustin Baker
Thanks for listening and join us next time on Upon This Land history, mystery and monuments.
Description
The George Washington Bicentennial was one of the largest organized celebratory events in American history. As we approach America’s Semiquincentennial in 2026, park rangers Jonathan and David discuss how the commemoration of George Washington's 200th birthday is still evident across America today, including at George Washington Birthplace National Monument.
Date Created
04/26/2025
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