As we gather to honor American independence day, it is worth reflecting on why our nation is referred to as the “American Experiment.”
Consider that there isn’t any reference to a “German Experiment” or “British Experiment.”
Our nation is an experiment because until we won our freedom and set up our government under the Constitution, no nation had ever been created on ideals.
To this day, you can recognize a citizen of another country by language, ethnicity or religious affiliation. But any of those people could be an American. Even in the 21st century, that remains a fairly radical proposition.
Those shared ideals found their voice in the document that declared our independence 236 years ago. A document that was cutting-edge in its own right as it proclaimed that all men are created equal. That unalienable rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness come from God, not from governments and kings. The profound idea that the power of government is derived from the people, and that governments are legitimate only through the consent of those governed.
Stating these principles and declaring independence was no small thing to those gathered in Philadelphia.
Popular imagination recalls the delegates to Congress, gathered in Philadelphia, bravely stepping forward to sign the Declaration of Independence, with the cocky John Hancock writing his name on center and large, “so that King George III could see it without his spectacles.”
But that, as John Adams himself pointed out years later, is a myth.
While Congress declared independence on the 4th, and copies of the document were printed locally and sent out by rider to the cities, the actual signing of the Declaration of Independence occurred over a period of weeks. The majority of delegates signed by August 2, but outliers – delegates that had been away from Philadelphia, or new members of Congress – signed as late as November 1776.
The actual list of 56 signers was not known to the American public until January, 1777.
This under-appreciated fact is of great importance, as it was during this six-month period, after the Declaration, that the American Revolution came closest to outright collapse.
As the delegates boldly declared political independence, the fate of that proposition rested on the failing military fortunes of the ill-equipped Continental Army, that was in New York preparing for the largest invasion force to attack the American homeland in US history. The juxtaposition between the precarious military situation outside of New York and of a brazen political statement for independence could not be more in contrast. Outgunned and out-generaled, George Washington spent the months between August and December retreating, first out of New York, and then down the full length of New Jersey, with the British in hot pursuit.
As David McCullough wrote in his book “1776,” “From the last week of August to the last week of December, the year 1776 had been as dark a time as those devoted to the American cause had ever known – indeed, as dark a time as any in the history of the country.”
But consider that despite this horrendous series of military setbacks that were an existential threat to the cause of liberty itself, the members of Congress continued to come to Philadelphia and sign their names to the Declaration.
It was a remarkable statement of individual courage in the service of shared ideals.
The Declaration of Independence ends in a pledge:
“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
This was not a throw away line. Signing the Declaration effectively made the signatories traitors to the Crown. Had the British prevailed, the signers would have been stripped of their possessions, tried and executed for treason. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it took guts for the wealthiest and best educated Americans of their time to step up and put all they had on the line for their ideals.
Thus, more than two centuries later, we remember not only the words which changed the course of human events, but the men of courage who stood behind those ideals, providing voice and determination without which there would be no America.
This is the reservoir of our national character, with its innate ability to catalyze national renewal, not when things are simple or easy, but when the issues are big and the tasks are hard. Not a perfect union, but a perpetual dedication to a more perfect union.
And so the American Experiment continues; principled and messy, thoughtful and loud, determined and disagreeable.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
May God Bless America.
Happy 4th to all of you.