Here we are, celebrating 250 years of American independence, and let’s be honest. It’s a bit awkward. Between polling data showing that trust in media is at its lowest in at least half a century (down from more than 70% in the 1970s to just over 30%); episodes of political violence, including the attempted assassination of Donald Trump; and distrust in institutions once held sacrosanct, like the Electoral College—it feels as if we’re watching Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty reach the golden anniversary right as their relationship hits full meltdown. Some people cope with a situation like that by pretending everything is fine, ready to move forward with booking the swank venue for the big bash. Others roll their eyes at the thought of celebrating a marriage so clearly on the rocks. Who’s right?
It’s both: We can recognize the problems and still raise a glass—and our history shows us why. After all, you didn’t think that we 21st century Americans are unique in facing the difficulty of living up to our own ideals? That we’re facing unprecedented challenges to democracy?
If only.
Across 250 years, this ongoing experiment in self-governance has progressed far more than it has backslid, but backslid it has. Indeed, this at times dysfunctional relationship has gone through nightmares getting here, including: abuses of the free press, deplorable political violence, and the loss of trust in institutions, even the electoral process. And yet, recognizing the dual nature of the nation’s past doesn’t diminish the significance of its endurance. In fact, acknowledging the worst of the that history shows what we can overcome.
“For god’s sake … cut him to pieces in the face of the public.” So wrote Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, effectively ordering a political hit-in-print on Alexander Hamilton—an order that the shorter Virginian “Little Jemmy” executed to a T. This beloved Union didn’t even get through George Washington’s first term before its first national newspapers, the Gazette of the United States and the National Gazette, became little more than partisan rags backing the nation’s immediately formed parties. While the National Gazette blasted the Federalists as “blood-sucking brokers” and “stock-jobbers” pushing “monarchical federalism,” the Gazette of the U.S. shot back with “mad dogs,” “audacious scribblers,” and helped originate that now timeless American classic in which we call the other party disloyal: “professed friends, but real enemies of the United States.”
“A scene of horror and murder ensued, which for its barbarity has no parallel in the history of the American people.” That’s how the Maryland House of Delegate’s investigating committee described the blood-filled summer night of 1812 during which Jeffersonian Republicans in Baltimore pummeled, clubbed, stabbed, sliced, stoned, and dripped hot wax on the held-open eyeballs of Federalists. The Jeffersonian Republicans carried out this horror-film level of torture while singing, “we’ll drink their blood. We’ll eat their hearts.”
That’s but one example of many stomach-turning breakdowns across generations. So, maybe—hear me out—it’s fair to say that our forebears weren’t better at democracy than we are?
As for elections, it seems that we practically have a standing tradition every four years of declaring that this is the worst election ever. Are our recent elections really worse than 1828’s, when that brilliant-yet-boring New Englander John Quincy Adams was reported to have procured American girls for the Russian Czar? Newspapers called JQA—the President of the United States!—“the Pimp of the Coalition.” Meanwhile, his political foe and the election’s victor, Andrew Jackson, arguably lost his wife to libel: It was shortly after reading twisted takes on her romantic past that she suffered a fatal heart attack. “May God Almighty forgive her murders as I know she forgave them! I never can,” AJ declared, as he laid Rachel to rest before heading to Washington to start his presidency.
And when it comes to disputed presidential elections , the election of 1876 is my go-to example of awful. Four states submitted multiple sets of electoral votes—and that’s to say nothing of the Democrats’ violence and murder of Black voters in the South; ballot stuffing, as evidenced by South Carolina’s mathematically impossible 101% voter turnout; attempted bribes; cries of civil war; and corrupt election boards. Even after Congress figured out what to do with multiple, competing electoral votes from four states, doubts lingered. The Democratic Party’s lawyer, Jeremiah Black, was utterly convinced that the Republic would never recover when the White House went to Republican Rutherford Hayes. According to Jeremiah: “we can never expect such a thing as an honest election again.”
But here’s the reality: Most Americans today don’t even know what happened in that election. Not even the well-educated, in-the-know voters. That’s how much of a blip on the radar what once seemed a terrifying nosedive off democracy’s cliff is today.
We could read these past shortcomings as failure—as nothing but American hypocrisy. But I see triumph over the worst of human nature. I see the country choosing union again and again, as we repair the relationship, renew our commitment to the best ideals, and refuse to let the better angles of our nature die.
I’m not saying Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty don’t have their problems. But there is a love, a connection, and a devotion to something greater that, so far, has won out.
Of course, that winning comes down to the real people in this relationship. And that isn’t our personifications of Uncle Sam or Lady Liberty. It’s We The People.
Will we choose us again?
For me, that choice is a “yes.” I hope it is for you too. So happy Semiquincentennial, America. Here’s to 250 sometimes embattled, but also beautiful years. May we choose 250 more to come.
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