The O’Toole Chronicles: The Promise of America

July 4th is celebrated as the date of our nation’s founding, a day marked by celebrations. That’s how it has been for 249 years. But back in July 1776, not everyone thought that would be the case. John Adams, who had something to say about our founding, wrote his beloved wife Abigail on July 3, 1776:

“The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Clearly, Adams didn’t hold back his emotions. He was referring to the July 2nd vote by the Continental Congress to support separating from Britain. By the time July 4th came around, the dye had already been cast.

Of course, history has its own mind and the formal vote on the 4th – with our neighbors across the Hudson abstaining, yes, the New York delegation abstained from voting because its delegation wasn’t authorized to vote on independence – is what is forever remembered as the moment America became America. However, the document we know will not be engraved until weeks later, and no one will start signing it until August 2nd.

There is a lesson to be learned in all this: America cannot be defined by a single date, or moment, or image, like the famous John Trumbull painting that wasn’t commissioned until 1817. America was and is a promise, and like many promises, its start date matters less than what it proposes to do.

In 2023, we can see that the Declaration of Independence promised many things it did not deliver then or 100 or even 249 years later. That is the challenge it presented to the Founders and to us – a more perfect Union. To the Founders, it was a more perfect Union than the one with Britain. It is to create a more perfect Union than did the Founders and their success.

Breaking from Britain was a radical concept for the men sweating inside a chamber in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776. More radical was the idea that all people are created equal. Jefferson and the Founders saw it as men, not people. And men had to be landowners. And they had to be white.

Today, we are challenged to understand what those Founders did and then deal with the consequences of those choices. As a Korean American, I can tell you that the concept of all people being created equal has not been universally embraced in our nation. I can also tell you, as a Korean American, that we Americans get it better with each passing generation. We do not always move in a straight line of progress, but we move forward.

This extraordinary experiment in democracy—America—is a forward-moving country. We have literally seen that movement in this region over centuries as immigrants flocked to our shores for a better life, sailing past the Statue of Liberty and landing here to start a new life. The ports of this region were portals to this idea of liberty for all.

It is hard to see an idea. The closest you can come to understanding the power of that idea – of that not still fulfilled promise of liberty to all – is to talk with individuals who have just become U.S. citizens. See the pride in their faces and hear the joy in their voices, and you will see and hear the glimmer of possibilities that America still offers.

Our Founders were flawed men, but they got the idea right and the promise correct. Whether we celebrate Independence on July 2nd,  as Adams had expected, or on July 4th, as we now do, we should celebrate the freedoms of America 365 days a year.

So, this July 4th, as you celebrate with friends and family at picnics or backyard barbecues and watch the fireworks explode in dazzling colors against a night sky, remember the promise of America. It is not a thing from the past but a living thing. It is a promise we make to our children and one they will to theirs:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

To all, a happy Fourth of July.