Why America’s next 250 years can be greater than its first 250
In August of 1776, the Revolution in America was almost snuffed out. Earlier that year, 44-year-old George Washington had marched 19,000 ragtag soldiers to Manhattan after forcing a British evacuation of Boston in the months before the declaration. In July, the British launched an attack on the colonies with the full weight of the most powerful military in the world. British General William Howe arrived at Staten Island with 400 ships and 32,000 well-trained men.
Washington was outflanked, outgunned and outmaneuvered. On the eve of the Battle of Brooklyn in late August, Washington rallied the troops saying:
The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.
Die, they did. After a brutal assault from Howe’s troops, Washington’s soldiers were forced to execute a panicked retreat into Brooklyn Heights. With their backs pinned against the East River, they were only spared by an act of God, a dense fog, that allowed Washington to escape with 9,000 troops across the river to Manhattan.
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They survived, but over the course of the fall, the new army was defeated in White Plains and Manhattan, forcing a retreat to New Jersey and leading to British occupation of New York for the remainder of the war. Morale collapsed. Enlistments expired. Soldiers deserted. The future looked grim.
As we celebrate 250 years of American identity, it’s easy to forget how rocky that path has been. The Revolutionary War lasted six years of active fighting (eight before a formal treaty), with the British on the brink of victory for much of that time. Emerging from the end of the war, the American movement faltered. Our first stab at governance, the Articles of Confederation, was calamitous — leading to a new Constitutional Convention in 1787. Despite electing Washington as president unanimously, the founders fragmented into ruthless factions that threatened to tear the new nation apart.
The British waged war again in 1812, occupying Washington, D.C., and burning the White House in 1814. Slavery, our nation’s greatest failure, persisted for nearly a century, and ended only when a terrible Civil War claimed the lives of some 600,000 to 800,000 Americans. Women were not granted the right to vote until 1920, nearly 150 years after Jefferson had declared all men free. And the late 1800s and early 1900s were plagued by ethnic strife, anarchist movements, assassinations and rising communism that imperiled the fledgling republic at every turn.
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But one nation, under God, endured. Washington led the new republic honorably as president then voluntarily relinquished power in a peaceful transition. Patriots fought the British to a stalemate in the War of 1812, and the new nation moved forward. The Founders and their successors conducted fierce political fights but found ways to work together and prove the efficacy of a democratic system.
President Abraham Lincoln reunified the republic, then his successors extended grace to those defeated so that we could move forward together. Opposing ethnic groups assimilated, e pluribus unum. Anarchism and communism retreated. And when the broader world was imperiled, we dispatched millions of brave Americans overseas to fight the evils of fascism beyond our shores. We resisted colonialism and financed the rebirth of enemies and allies alike. We grew the greatest entrepreneurial economy in history. We marched toward equal rights and opportunity for all.
And despite our flaws, on the eve of our 250th birthday, America still stands as a great beacon for freedom around the world, and home to the most prosperous, diverse and innovative people in history.
What’s next? It’s tempting to be pessimistic. We see our problems. Politics and culture are divided. A suffocating national debt. Ideological enemies overseas who care little for human freedom. A people who sometimes seem to have forgotten the principles of this great republic and the sacrifice required to sustain it.
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Technological changes that, while they may offer great promise, also threaten disruption on a historically unprecedented scale. In the midst of this, it would be easy to feel like those frightened soldiers pinned against the East River in Brooklyn, unable to envision a future for the American experiment through the fog of our present circumstances.
But those early patriots prevailed. So must we. The world needs it. We are history’s grandest, longest-standing experiment in self-governance and liberty. And far from allowing our dreams to decay in the decades following the declaration, our forebears pursued them courageously and at great cost so that they could one day be closer to coming true. The first 250 years of our nation’s history showed not a managed decline, but the constant progress of human liberty — an imperfect nation full of imperfect people who nonetheless found new ways to grow and to aspire to our hallowed founding ideals.
This will require battling, as the early patriots did to advance this great country and her ideals. Many of these battles will be in our own hearts — fighting the urge to divide rather than unite, to retreat in fear from new dangers rather than to confront them with courage, to shrink from our ideals rather than hold steadfast and advance. And they will be in our states, cities, and communities — where each day we face the challenge of remembering who we are as a nation and looking forward, not backward, to pioneering new expressions of "one nation, under God, indivisible" even as the challenges of the coming centuries attempt to tear us apart.
As we celebrate America 250, we must believe we are not in the twilight of the revolution, but its early hours. In late August 1776, those beleaguered soldiers in Brooklyn must have been frightened by the fog rolling in. But that peril became their path to hope. They defied the darkness and fought through. The world is foggy now. But that's never stopped us before. New horizons await our next 250 years — if we have the courage and confidence to move forward, together unafraid.