By Francis Ambrogio
The celebrations are over – I hope your burgers and beers and time spent with family and friends were as good as mine. Fortunately, the art of the smashburger has made its way across the Atlantic, but I do have to admit that German helles really does rate a lot better than many American beers.
Let’s take a bit of a time jump, for a moment – if it were the week after July 4, 1776, you might just be hearing news of the Declaration of Independence right around now.
If you were in a town or city not controlled by the British, the Declaration might be read aloud, likely with great pomp and circumstance, with the ringing of bells and the firing of muskets into the air – but you wouldn’t be alone if you were one of the many wondering if independence from the British Empire was wise or even possible, even if it may have seemed the principled move. More than that, it was one thing for your ancestors to force kings to agree to share power with Parliament, but it was entirely something else to completely separate not just from the King but from the entire British system – its global network and its prosperity, its power and its protection, its ancient constitution, and its pride and legacy.
If you were in the Continental Army, you might hear the Declaration read aloud as you stood in formation, wondering if its high-minded words might lift your comrades’ spirits, even if it didn’t lift your own. The Continental Army had already faced more than a few setbacks, and both supplies and morale were in short supply. If you were an American diplomat overseas, you might have taken a deep breath or two as you announced the Declaration to a foreign court, hoping for at least nominal support for a declaration to which any king would certainly raise an eyebrow.
All in all, the Declaration of Independence was bold – perhaps even a bit brash – and in 1776, it the independence it declared was by no means guaranteed. It took another two years for any foreign power to recognize the independence of the thirteen States, and it took five more long years to actually win the War of Independence.
Even after independence was secured, the thirteen United States’ confederation looked shaky. Congress could not pay its soldiers – let alone the new nation’s foreign creditors from the late war – and but for the personal intervention of George Washington, the Continental Army may have done what so many other victorious armies have done throughout history and seized power for itself. Over the next few years, the United States were unable to put down rebellions, protect their frontier, or even levy taxes. It took some clever politicking and inspired leadership to wrangle the thirteen States into a new and far more functional federal Constitution, which lasts into our own times.
I do not have space here to recount every other great challenge to the vision set forth in the Declaration of Independence. But to name a few – a secession crisis and Civil War rocked the republic to its foundation, but it emerged stronger – even driving a grammatical shift, with the term “United States” going from a plural to a singular noun. No other nation has reconciled so quickly after a civil war, particularly one so brutal and devastating. Veterans of both sides literally shook hands on former battlefields, former Confederate general James Longstreet led US troops to break racist riots, and it was President William McKinley – a decorated veteran of the Union Army – who insisted on honorable graves for fallen Confederate soldiers. Massive economic changes, such as the Industrial Revolution, and crises, most notably the Great Depression – and perhaps future shake-ups from artificial intelligence – have challenged how we approach citizenship, politics, and power. The Civil Rights Movement showed the whole nation what believing in its promise really was, even as so much of the country rejected black Americans for no reason besides the color of their skin. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his singularly magnificent oratory, called upon the United States to fulfill the “promissory note” written into the Declaration, echoing the ideas of the great Frederick Douglass a hundred years before, when he said “The principles contained in [the Declaration] are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.” Rev. King, more than any American of the 20th century, challenged and demanded that our country, in the name of God, be what it ought to be and could be.
It is easy to reduce patriotism to flag waving and barbecues and fireworks. Those things are truly important, and I have only come to value them more after living in Europe, where some with “post-national” perspectives see our fireworks and barbecues and flag waving as quaint or outdated. That said, the Declaration of Independence itself was exactly that – a declaration. Independence and liberty were won, and then improved, and today are maintained by the dedication and struggles of everyday Americans. At the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin famously quipped, “It’s a republic, if we can keep it.” While Franklin was his usual wry and clever self in framing it in such a way, from the beginning, liberty was a project – an ongoing one in which we all have a part.
Francis Ambrogio is a Cos Cob native and a graduate of Greenwich High School and the United States Military Academy at West Point. He currently serves as a Captain in the US Army and is stationed in Bavaria.
