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Forged by Tradition, Heritage, and Sacrifice: The Story of America
by S.A. McCarthy
The United States of America is preparing to celebrate the 250th anniversary of her founding. On a June afternoon in 1776, statesman Richard Henry Lee (a distant cousin of the Virginian military commander Robert E. Lee) introduced to the Second Continental Congress a resolution to declare independence from the British Empire, clarifying that the Thirteen Colonies are “free and independent States” and not subjects of British rule.
The resolution was approved on 2 July that same year and, two days later, Lee and his brother, Francis Lightfoot Lee, signed the monumental Declaration of Independence, largely authored by Thomas Jefferson, which detailed the reasons that North and South Carolina, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia were no longer shackled to the British crown.
In the nearly 250 years since that fateful day, when history would be forever changed, the question, oft repeated in recent years, has arisen: “What is an American?” Is an “American” nothing more than a transplant from Europe? Are “Americans” a distinct people, with their own nation, culture, customs, and history? Is being an “American” adhering to a belief system, so that some may apostatise and others convert?
Fittingly, on the eve of this great nation’s 250th birthday, American President Donald Trump suggested an answer to the question. Surprisingly, the occasion was afforded by a state visit from Britain’s King Charles III, successor to the very King George III that America’s inaugural class of citizens rebelled and waged war against in a desperate fight for independence.
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The Story of America: Forged by Tradition, Heritage, and Sacrifice
As America approaches its 250th birthday, what does it truly mean to be an American? The answer lies deep in history, heritage, and sacrifice.
The United States is preparing to celebrate the 250th anniversary of her founding. On a June afternoon in 1776, statesman Richard Henry Lee introduced a resolution to the Second Continental Congress to declare independence from the British Empire. The resolution was approved on 2 July that same year. Two days later, Lee and his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee signed the monumental Declaration of Independence, largely authored by Thomas Jefferson.
In the nearly 250 years since that fateful day, the question has arisen again and again: What is an American? Is an American nothing more than a transplant from Europe? Are Americans a distinct people with their own nation, culture, customs, and history? Is being an American about adhering to a belief system, so that some may apostatise and others convert?
Fittingly, on the eve of this great nation’s 250th birthday, President Donald Trump suggested an answer. The occasion was a state visit from Britain’s King Charles III – successor to the very King George III that America’s first citizens rebelled against in a desperate fight for independence.
Roots of a Nation: The British Heritage Behind the American Founding
“Honouring the British king might seem an ironic beginning to our celebration of 250 years of American independence, but, in fact, no tribute could be more appropriate,” the president said when welcoming the monarch to the White House.
“Long before Americans had a nation or a constitution, we first had a culture, a character, and a creed. Before we ever proclaimed our independence, Americans carried within us the rarest of gifts: moral courage. And it came from a small but mighty kingdom from across the sea.”
“For nearly two centuries before the Revolution, this land was settled and forged by men and women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here, on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and the great Briton’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride.”
“The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage, their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true.”
Then came a slight shift – a line drawn between the settlers and pioneers of the past and the America of today. “In recent years, we’ve often heard it said that America is merely an idea, but the cause of freedom did not simply appear as an intellectual invention of 1776. The American founding was the culmination of hundreds of years of thought, struggle, sweat, blood, and sacrifice on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Referring to the signing of the Magna Carta, which bound King John to respect and protect the rights of his subjects, the president continued: “Fate drew a long arc from the meadow at Runnymede to the streets of Philadelphia, that ran through the lives of people born and bred on the British Code: that no man should be denied either justice or right. American patriots today can sing, ‘My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty,’ only because our colonial ancestors first sang, ‘God Save the King.'”
Speaking at a later event alongside the British monarch, the president added: “It’s only natural that Americans begin this commemoration by paying tribute to the transcendent bond we share with the nation that Thomas Jefferson himself called ‘our mother country.'”
The men of English stock who crossed the Atlantic called their new home New England, the president observed, and they “meant that very, very literally. The first Americans saw themselves as free men, carrying forward the central liberties and ancient rights of the Anglo-Saxons into this new and beautiful world. In the eyes of America’s founders, our War of Independence was fought not to reject this heritage, but to reclaim it and perfect it.”
“The Declaration of Independence was a miracle for the ages that sparked a far-reaching revolution in self-government and human freedom. But even though the political bonds between the United States and Great Britain were dissolved forever on July 4th, 1776, the more powerful strands of memory, culture, and identity proved unbreakable in any conflict and grew into a friendship unlike any other on earth.”
The president noted that many states and cities are named after British monarchs and heroes – Albany, New York, was christened after the Duke of Albany; the Carolinas were named in honour of King Charles I; Georgia is named after King George II; Virginia is named after Queen Elizabeth I, the “Virgin Queen”. But he stressed that the impact of English culture, morals, and law went far deeper than namesakes.
“Historians have noted that to this day, the distinct regions of the United States still echo with the particular accents, habits, and traditions of the British communities that first settled them centuries ago,” he said. “But far beyond names and principles, there’s something unique and very special that has always united our two people, a certain nobility of spirit and heroic soul.”
“The same audacity that called a small island kingdom to rule the seven seas – and rule them you did – inspired the children of 13 American colonies to explore a great frontier, a very, very dangerous frontier, and settle what was known as the Wild West. The men who planted the American flag on the moon carried with them the same hunger for adventure and achievement as those who raised the Union Jack above Antarctica and first sailed Saint George’s Cross all around the globe. The entire world has been uplifted by this distinct and special character. We share this unstoppable daring, this unconquerable courage.”
The president’s language acknowledges an essential truth about the American nation and, just as importantly, the American people. A nation and its people are inextricable. There is no America without Americans. But what is an American?
As the president noted, the American people found their roots in England, specifically, and Europe more broadly. The traditions of Europe – Christian morality, a love of beauty and building, and the richness of the Western legal and intellectual tradition – served as the bedrock upon which the United States was founded. Even today, the US Supreme Court sometimes refers back to English common law. The court does not examine the ancient laws of India, the Middle East, China, or sub-Saharan Africa, for these cultures have no relation to the founding and the tradition of America.
The American nation was settled by predominantly English men – those who established settlements at Jamestown, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Williamsburg, and eventually the 13 Colonies. These brave men crossed the ocean and tamed an alien wilderness, bringing a uniquely English order to the wild New World.
Of course, the English were not the only ones. By the time the Declaration was signed, America was a nation with a predominantly English heritage and character, but included some of Dutch, French, German, and Irish stock, as well as many Scots and Scots-Irish. All those who made up the founding stock shared a common Western heritage, and largely settled on an English model of governance, with unique American innovations inspired by the Roman Republic and the city-states of Ancient Greece.
More Than an Idea: Blood, Sacrifice, and the Making of Americans
Trump acknowledged, rightly, that America is not merely an idea. It is not a purely propositional nation. America is a nation and a people. While both have a set of ideals to which they strive to conform, being an American is no mere belief system – a matter of passing a series of exams and checking boxes.
There are some who could accept every single proposition of the propositional nation, yet who have never set foot in the country, have no ties or relations to the country. Is such a one more of an American than the young man who perhaps devotes himself to half of America’s ideals and grapples with the rest, but counts among his ancestors veterans of the Revolutionary War and Pilgrims of the Mayflower? No. Being an American is more than a creed: it is a life lived and, when necessary, offered up.
In the final line of the Declaration of Independence, the 56 signers agreed that “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.”
Had the American Patriots lost the Revolutionary War, all of the men who attached their names to the Declaration would have almost certainly been tried for treason, convicted, and hanged. Each of those men offered his life for his nation and her people. The Declaration of Independence was not a “statement of belief” – it was a blood pact, a tethering of one’s mortal life to one’s nation and her people.
It was this complete devotion – what Abraham Lincoln would later call the “last full measure of devotion” – that made these men Americans. In the succeeding years, many men paid for the title of “American” with their blood, others with their daily offering of sweat, tears, and toil. Nobody became an American by simply signing a consent form or agreeing to a series of charming propositions.
One People, One Loyalty: Roosevelt’s Vision of True Americanism
Trump is not the first to address what it means to be an American. In a 1901 speech, President Theodore Roosevelt observed that the American people are rooted in the blood and traditions of Europe, but have become a distinct and unique people.
“The Americans are children and grandchildren of the men who came here from England, Ireland, Germany, France, Scandinavia, and the rest of Europe [and] have become Americans – a new race, with a new ethnic type, and they are no more Englishmen or Germans or Scandinavians than the descendants of the Norman invaders of England are Frenchmen.”
“The frontier conditions made a new race. The stern struggle with the wilderness and with wild men welded together the descendants of many European stocks into one people – the American. Out of the crucible of the wilderness came a new ethnic type, hardy, self-reliant, democratic in instinct, and with a continent for its inheritance.”
Roosevelt also acknowledged that those who are not necessarily of that foundational English stock can, with time and commitment, become Americans, but that it would come at a cost. “We must Americanize them in every way, in speech, in political ideas and principles, and in their way of looking at the relations between Church and State,” Roosevelt said of newcomers.
“We welcome the German or the Irishman who becomes an American. We have no use for the German or Irishman who remains such. We do not wish German-Americans and Irish-Americans who figure as such in our social and political life; we want only Americans. We have no room in any healthy American community for a German-American vote or an Irish-American vote. We have no room for any people who do not act and vote simply as Americans, and as nothing else.”
While Roosevelt argued against discriminating against immigrants on the basis of colour, creed, or national origin, he warned in a 1919 letter that “this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American.”
He continued: “There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag. … We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language … and we have room for but one sole loyalty, and that is a loyalty to the American people.”
So What Is an American?
The very first Americans were fierce patriots of English stock, steeped for generations in the great moral and intellectual traditions of the West. It was their blood, sweat, tears, toil, and the sacrifice of their lives that made them Americans.
It was that same fiery spirit which drove Americans in subsequent generations to head West, to tame the wilderness, to seek out and settle every frontier, with many perishing in the attempt. In short, as both Trump and Roosevelt implicitly acknowledge, an American is a person of any colour or creed devoted unwaveringly and unerringly to America.
As one reader commented: “It took great courage and enormous sacrifice to declare independence from Britain. Today, as in Australia, American patriotism is under attack, as are its Christian roots. But people with Trump’s lead are fighting back.”
Another wrote: “Marvelous and patriotic article that Australians should not lose sight of – but emulate.”
Republished with thanks to The Washington Stand. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
