Though the Fourth of July is less than a month away, the 250th anniversary of American independence has been met with overwhelming ambivalence. I suspect that is because Americans no longer feel we are one people. Our nation encompasses hundreds of millions of souls who speak hundreds of different languages. And the public is so divided along political fault lines that openly displaying patriotic symbols can be seen as a partisan act.

To fully understand and celebrate our semiquincentennial, we must reflect on what made us a nation.

The Declaration of Independence opens with the claim that Americans are “one people” who must “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with” the British. But what makes the Americans “one people,” separate and distinct from other peoples? What, after all, makes a people?

The famous opening of the Declaration’s second paragraph offers a clue: “We hold these truths to be self-evident….” As Willmoore Kendall pointed out in The Conservative Affirmation, the “We” is important. All political societies, he argued, are founded on a “consensus,” a “hard core of shared belief.” Part of what made America a people was basic agreement on the most serious political matters.

Americans believed that God had endowed them with certain natural rights, that governments were instituted by the consent of the people to secure those rights, and that the people had a right and duty to alter or abolish their government if it failed to secure their safety and happiness. The fact that “We” held certain truths to be self-evident also meant that contrary beliefs were anathema to decent society.

This American creed is necessary because it provides a common understanding of justice, establishes rules of conduct, lays a foundation for law, and forges a cultural bond among citizens. Our nation has always been too large to depend upon an intimate familiarity between every citizen. Friendships and blood ties alone cannot bind us together or discourage the wickedness that too often makes it impossible for human beings to live peacefully together.

However useful and necessary a creed may be, it alone cannot make a people, especially since Americans today do not agree on what the words of our creed even mean. We cannot expect recitations of the Declaration to work like a magic spell that, cast enough times, turns the listener into a red-blooded American patriot. We can recognize, as Carson Holloway noted earlier in this series, that the Declaration’s natural law principles are universally true, but that these principles do not preclude sovereign, distinct nations.

The Blessings of Providence

In Federalist 2, John Jay explains why Americans should remain one nation under a constitutional union. He begins by recounting the Declaration’s understanding of the origin of government: because human beings in a state of nature are vulnerable to wicked assaults on their life, liberty, and property, there is an “indispensable necessity for government” that compels men to consent to a common authority to which they cede “some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers.”

From this universal principle, Jay turns to the particulars that make it possible for Americans to be one nation under a shared government. Our land is geographically suited to a single, independent nation by ease of communication and commerce, and is rich and diverse enough to supply most of our wants.

More importantly, Jay claims,

Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts…have nobly established general liberty and independence.

Note that Jay combines elements of what today would be considered both “civic” and “ethnic” nationalism—shared principles and beliefs, coupled with shared blood, customs, and traditions. These elements are intertwined and reinforce each other.

Breaking down this passage helps explain the components that make a people. Those descended from the same ancestors are traditionally considered a single people—“nation,” after all, derives from the Latin word for birth, natus. People with common ancestry are no strangers to each other and are apt to share the attachment and friendship necessary for mutual government.

A common language allows citizens of the same nation to engage in politics together and deliberate on their laws and policies. Shared manners and customs forge common ties among a people. Religion gives shape to a people by directing their piety toward something higher than the individual. A common history and shared struggle produce a collective memory of heroes and great deeds that forms a national identity and inspires later generations to seek greatness. Finally, and most importantly, a people must be “attached to the same principles of government.” Consensus is necessary to determine what kind of nation this is.

Some may claim Jay exaggerated America’s homogeneity to mount an expedient defense of the Constitution, but it is easy to overstate these differences.

Most Americans of the founding era were of British stock. Outside a few small enclaves, English was the predominant language. The great majority were Christians of one stripe or another. Even Unitarians like John Adams and heterodox thinkers like Thomas Jefferson were influenced by Christian teaching and respectfully submitted to the overwhelming Christian public sentiment. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted a generation later, whatever theological differences existed among America’s many churches, they more or less taught their congregants the same moral duties as men and citizens.

Nationalism, Then and Now

Though there was no uniformity on all matters—an impossible standard—there was enough to form what the founders called a “national character.” This is the summation of a people’s qualities: their virtues, vices, customs, dispositions, prejudices, and, ultimately, their way of life. Wherever there is a nation, one can find commonalities in the character of its people.

John Adams succinctly explained the sources of the American national character in his famous letter to the Abbé de Mably, a sympathetic nobleman who wished to write a history of the American Revolution. Adams did not point his interlocutor to the Declaration of Independence. Instead, he wrote that one must first recognize that there “is a general Analogy, in the Governments and Characters of all the thirteen States.” Whatever regional distinctions existed, Americans everywhere shared a common education derived from four localized institutions: town governments, churches, schools, and militia service. Each institution formed habits and virtues that made the American people fit to govern themselves in their own distinct way.

Town governments cultivated prudence, judgment, and deliberation, as citizens were forced to solve local problems with their neighbors. Churches instilled piety, moderation, and a sense of justice. Schools nurtured wisdom in children and prepared the brightest minds to attend universities, where they would train for important social and political roles. Militia service instilled bravery in American men, giving them the discipline and fortitude to assert their rights against foreign and domestic foes. Together, these institutions formed an education for the American soul, uniquely fitting it to our own form of constitutional government.

The Founding Fathers sought to create a new nation, replete with its own distinct moral principles and way of life. In this respect, even those most suspect of centralized government were unabashed nationalists. Warning against the dangers of consolidated government, James Madison simultaneously wished “that a consolidation should prevail in [the people’s] interests and affections.”

The founders were not content to let nature take its course or to trust that the institutions Adams identified would hold the nation together on their own. They unashamedly supported patriotic education, hoping to render the people more virtuous and homogeneous. They celebrated heroes such as Paul Revere, Nathan Hale, and, of course, George Washington. When Noah Webster published his 1793 English textbook—which was meant to replace the foreign-sourced British textbooks and instill moral formation and national pride alongside lessons in grammar and rhetoric—he included on the cover this exhortation to American mothers: “Begin with the infant in his cradle: Let the first word he lisps be WASHINGTON.”

Immigration was restricted to those peoples most likely to assimilate into American culture. Founders such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin sought to encourage growth of the native population to avoid the need for mass immigration. George Washington even expressed concern that the emigration of a group of Swiss professors to the United States would create assimilation problems, despite their shared adherence to republican government.

On foreign policy, Washington and others were skeptical of foreign wars and alliances for many reasons, one of which was that political entanglements abroad would invite foreign intrigue at home, disrupting civic solidarity and reducing the country to a state of spiritual servitude. In his inaugural address, President John Adams told his fellow Americans that political factions are often benign, except when foreign powers begin to meddle in them. He went so far as to call foreign influence the “angel of destruction to elective government.”

Recovering the founders’ deep sense of nationhood today must be both a top-down and bottom-up effort. It will require ending mass immigration, encouraging assimilation and the use of the English language, promoting patriotic education, and shielding the nation from undue foreign influence. It will also require everyday citizens to restore the local institutions that Adams identified as the source of our civic strength. We Americans have the great benefit of being able to cultivate our national character simply by improving our own local governments, churches, and schools.

Ultimately, this is a battle between two understandings of justice. American nationalists cannot yield the moral high ground to globalists. Nationalists must speak candidly of a full-throated way of life that the people should confidently adopt—it is no coincidence that the founders often spoke of “national honor,” “national pride,” and “national dignity” alongside “national character.” This way of life must reject the advances of globalism, restore the dignity of citizenship, and reestablish our national character. There is little hope of achieving this without recovering the nationalist roots of our country and the nationalist morality of our Declaration of Independence. If we achieve anything in our 250th year, let it be this.