How Americans Celebrated the Centennial in 1876

In the summer of 1876, the United States was preparing for its 100th birthday with patriotic celebrations. In its first century, the country had grown from 13 states to 37, with Colorado poised to become the 38th state weeks after July 4.  

But while Americans felt proud, many were also worried. “The country was filled with anxiety for the future,” says Fergus Bordewich, historian and author of Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America’s Future.

The festivities included the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the first U.S. world’s fair, designed as a celebration of American triumph and progress. Yet, Bordewich adds, it unfolded amid economic depression, political upheaval, racial violence and a war in the West.  

The Panic of 1873 had triggered what Bordewich calls the worst depression in American history to date. “There had been massive unemployment, particularly in cities, and a great deal of suffering on the part of unemployed workers,” he says. Labor unrest was also rising. “Wages had been cut in many industries by 10 percent to 50 percent. People were hungry,” Bordewich explains. “The country hadn’t recovered by 1876.”

At the same time, Reconstruction was reaching a violent end in the South. Bordewich says for several years, groups such as the Ku Klux Klan carried out a campaign of guerrilla-style violence aimed at newly freed people with the goal of dismantling biracial democracy in the South. Black Americans in the South, he says, were “beleaguered, increasingly being disenfranchised and, in many places, in fear for their lives.” 

Conflict was also taking place in the West. In June 1876, George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry Regiment were defeated at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

However, amid these tensions, patriotism surged as Americans remained deeply connected to the Revolution. “The last veterans of the American Revolution died only in the 1870s,” Bordewich says, noting that many adults had known people who remembered the Founders. “There was a deep well of thrill at the nation achieving its first century. But beneath the surface, there was fear and anxiety.”

President Ulysses S. Grant urged a “day of reflection and gratitude.” Congress declared a National Day of Jubilee. And millions of Americans embraced the moment. 

Philadelphia was the natural choice for the Centennial Exposition, home to Independence Hall, the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention and, for 10 years, the U.S. capital.

“It’s the city most closely associated with the Revolution,” Bordewich says. 

The Fairmount Park fairgrounds featured enormous glass-and-iron halls modeled on European railway stations. Inside, visitors encountered what Bordewich calls “a humongous department store”—a display of American manufacturing power. “People were just dazzled by how much the country was making… Everything you could imagine from soap to steam engines,” he says.

The exposition was designed not only to celebrate the past but also to restore national confidence. “Americans were very, very proud of America,” Bordewich says. “They were proud of its growth, proud of its westward expansion and industrial expansion. …People went there and really were inspired by what they saw.” 


The best-known American attraction at the 1876 world's fair was the Corliss steam engine, a 50-foot-tall machine that powered all of Machinery Hall. The Library of Congress describes it as “a reflection of national pride,” dominating the hall and “seizing the attention of visitors.” Its symbolic importance was underscored when Grant and Brazil’s Emperor Dom Pedro II jointly started the engine at the opening ceremony.

The fair also introduced inventions that would reshape modern life. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone received its first public demonstration. “It was a sensation,” Bordewich says, noting that it was primitive yet functional and entered production within a year. Early typewriters, soda water and ice cream were also among the attractions that captivated visitors.

By the time the exposition closed in November after a six-month run, nearly 10 million people had visited, according to Congress.gov. Of the approximately 30,000 exhibitors, almost two-thirds were international, according to American Heritage magazine, and foreign visitors flocked to Philadelphia as well. 

“Before 1876, Europeans generally thought of the United States as an underdeveloped and second-rate country at the outer fringe of Western civilization,” the magazine wrote. “After 1876, they regarded America as the land of progress.”

Despite its national ambitions, the Centennial Exposition reflected the racial and class hierarchies of its time. Native Americans were almost entirely absent, according to Bordewich, who says a Smithsonian plan to bring 200 Native Americans to demonstrate cultural practices was scrapped, leaving only a display of artifacts. He says many visitors came away with the belief that Indigenous people were “disappearing,” reflecting a broader social view of Native Americans at the time.  

Immigrants, Bordewich adds, had little organized presence. “This was really a celebration of white America: of, by and for white people,” he says.  

Black Americans were also largely excluded, according to Bordewich, who notes that Southern states threatened to withdraw if Black exhibitors were included, and white Northerners, tiring of Reconstruction, did not intervene. “It’s not that they were banned, exactly, but Black organizations were not invited to participate in planning,” he says.

Still, at least two Black exhibitors made significant contributions. William Still, an Underground Railroad stationmaster in Philadelphia, exhibited his firsthand account of the Black experience on the freedom trail. And Edmonia Lewis, known as the first internationally recognized Black and Native American sculptor, displayed her acclaimed neoclassical work The Death of Cleopatra.

Segregation at the fair was inconsistent. While some sources suggest Black visitors were unwelcome at times, Bordewich found “images of and references to Black visitors” and says sculptures depicting emancipation drew both admiration and Southern protest. 

Women played a significant, if contested, role in the Centennial Exposition. The Women’s Pavilion, funded and run by women, showcased female inventors, professionals and educators. Inside, visitors found machinery designed by women, a woman-operated steam engine and even a functioning kindergarten, Bordewich says. The pavilion also printed its own newspaper. 

He says many women attended the fair as visitors, but suffragists were barred from participating. In response, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and their allies staged a dramatic July 4 intervention. According to the National Park Service, they approached the dais during the official ceremony and handed the acting vice president a new Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States. They then crossed the square and read it publicly, asserting “full equality with man in natural rights.”

The centennial thus became “fertile ground for feminist organization and activism,” Bordewich says. 

While Philadelphia was the epicenter, Americans across the country and abroad took part in patriotic centennial commemorations. 

Historian John D. Bergamini, in The Hundredth Year: The United States in 1876, writes that some towns layered local anniversaries into the national one. A parade in Amherst, Massachusetts, celebrated both the centennial and the town’s founding. At the same time, Richmond, Virginia, flew the U.S. and state flags together over its Capitol for the first time in six years. But it wasn’t all glee. In Wilmington, North Carolina, a young Woodrow Wilson wrote in his diary that “the nation would never celebrate another centennial as a republic.”

Across the country, events rolled westward, Bergamini wrote. With Colorado on the cusp of statehood, Denver “had its special local enthusiasm for Centennial Day,” and Los Angeles staged “an extravaganza.”

Congress also sponsored additional commemorations, including official Centennial medals struck at the U.S. Mint, and the creation of the Centennial Safe, filled with memorabilia and ceremonially sealed in 1876 with the expectation that a future president would open it in 1976.

“The country’s national day was also marked abroad with noise and pomp,” Bergamini added. “Foreign heads of state sent messages of congratulation, those from the more autocratic European monarchies giving the most wry satisfaction to Washington.”