Museum celebrates the nation’s 250th birthday with a Declaration of Independence program
June 18, 2026
John Adams was, at the time, certain that July 2 – the day the Second Continental Congress officially voted to sever ties with Great Britain – would always be celebrated by Americans as our Independence Day.
But almost right away, July 4 became the day everyone remembered and celebrated. That was the day the members of Congress signed the document that Thomas Jefferson wrote after the official vote. (Adams, who had made a nuisance of himself ramming independence through Congress, never fully accepted that two-day delay.)
So in respect to both those Founders, the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum is splitting the difference: At noon on Friday, July 3, award-winning history teacher Mike Burgess will deliver a free lecture titled “We Hold These Truths to be Self-evident – the Declaration of Independence at 250.” The lecture is open to the public as part of the museum’s regular Noon Debrief program.
Additionally, from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. that day, there will be re-enactors and other devotees of history in the Atrium of the museum, with various displays of artifacts and activities, ready to answer your questions about what you behold. It will be a sort of smaller staging of the annual Revolutionary War Day. You can touch historical objects, make pomander balls, make a flag, read brochures about South Carolina’s celebration of the 250th, and more.
About the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum
Founded in 1896, the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum is an accredited museum focusing on South Carolina’s distinguished martial tradition through the Revolutionary War, Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, Vietnam, the War on Terror, and other American conflicts. It serves as the state’s military history museum by collecting, preserving, and exhibiting South Carolina’s military heritage from the colonial era to the present, and by providing superior educational experiences and programming. It recently opened a major new exhibit, “A War With No Front Lines: South Carolina and the Vietnam War, 1965-1973.” The museum is located at 301 Gervais St. in Columbia, sharing the Columbia Mills building with the State Museum. For more information, go to https://crr.sc.gov/.
