America is exceptional — and must long endure well after the nation’s 250th.
That conviction deepened in early May when my father, brothers, brother-in-law, and I made a long-overdue pilgrimage to the Gettysburg battlefield. From Little Round Top to Devil’s Den to the Peach Orchard to the High Water Mark, visiting the sites where the Union and Confederacy clashed between July 1-3, 1863, contextualized what I only gathered in history books, paintings, and documentaries.
To walk peacefully across the ground where more than 165,000 men fought — and where some 51,000 were casualties — was surreal. The beautiful day’s quiet wind and bright sun my family and I enjoyed starkly contrasted with the battle’s fog of war, death, torn land, and deafening artillery bombardment.
The Union troops could not have known that their courage would preserve the nation generations of Americans would inherit — the one borne from the Declaration of Independence, whose anniversary was commemorated the following day. Historians rightly regard Gettysburg as the Civil War’s turning point. By the summer of 1863, Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy had won numerous victories and sown anguish in the North. With the Union’s triumph, however, the Confederacy never mounted a major invasion of Northern territory again.
But the Battle of Gettysburg is more than an American milestone; it is a crux in world history. With the Union victory in the Civil War, slavery was abolished. Future generations of Americans were saved from bondage. The united continent became — and remains — a refuge for millions fleeing persecution or seeking greater opportunity. The ramifications of preserving the Union extended well beyond the 19th century. In the 20th, the New World helped rescue and liberate the Old, defeating totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and, ultimately, prevailing in the Cold War against Soviet communism.
Without a united United States of America, the principle that “all men are created equal” and the cause for human liberty would have been profoundly diminished on the world stage.
Gettysburg, then, is more than rolling farmlands stained by sacrifice. Among the battleground’s rocks, hills, and tranquil farmland is where the American experiment — and freedom — survived from the jaws of dissolution and diminution.
Walking the hallowed grounds, this truth became self-evident. One cannot help but feel a deeper gratitude for the Founding Fathers who established the republic and the soldiers who preserved it over the past 250 years. They risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to create and preserve a new nation based on liberty and self-government.
America is singular in world history because it recognized the everlasting rights “endowed” by our transcendent Creator rather than the fickle, susceptible laws of man.
Yet nations rise and fall. History is littered with the ruins of once-great civilizations. America is not exempt from this death. Scripture warns believers the devil prowls “like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour.” Likewise, a free people must remain vigilant against cynicism or complacency lest they squander our forefathers’ sacrifices. As Abraham Lincoln’s clarion call asserted in the Gettysburg Address, citizens bear a responsibility so “that these dead shall not have died in vain.”
As the nation marks the 250th, however, that responsibility is more urgent. A record low number of citizens feel proud to be Americans; a majority believe the country’s “best days” are in the past; and most Americans suggest the country has moved away from its founding principles. Concurrently, ideologies diametrically opposed to the principles enshrined in the Declaration and U.S. Constitution are gaining traction. Antisemitism and anti-religious bigotry has sharply risen within the past few years. Political violence and polarization has intensified. Historical literacy, meanwhile, has drastically declined with fewer citizens lacking basic knowledge of American principles and the sacrifices that shaped the republic.
Coupled with sociological, cultural, educational, and economic unrest across ideological spectrums, America appears unmoored.
Despair, however, is the greatest sin because it abandons hope; but hope has always been one of America’s defining virtues.
Hope is woven into the Declaration’s affirmation that every individual has inherent dignity and the right to seek their life’s purpose free from government meddling. Hope crossed the Delaware with George Washington and stormed the beaches of Normandy. Hope inspired generations to build a stronger civil society through charity, innovation and exploration. And hope welcomed millions of immigrants who came to these shores seeking freedom and the chance to contribute to this grand democratic experiment.
This American project has not been perfect. No nation — or person — is. But hope is more than optimism. It is the conviction that our freedoms transcend political parties, nationalities, or the evolving cultural tides because they are rooted in God, Our Creator. It is confidence in his Providence, and choosing to love and defend those blessings freely given, even at the cost of our own lives. Indeed, in pursuing God, we pursue eternal happiness.
If we desire to preserve those freedoms, we must remember upon whom those freedoms depend. We must study our history, visiting the battlefields where Americans fought for the republic, and teaching future generations why those sacrifices mattered.
Most imperatively, we must hope again — so that our nation shall not die in vain. That the United States, “under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,” as Lincoln declared eight score and three years ago.
Americans have withstood greater crises than today’s trials. We can again. The proof rests on the quiet hills and farmland at Gettysburg.
Andrew Fowler is the Editor of RealClearReligion. He is also author of "The Condemned," a novella about a Catholic priest fighting off the cartel to save the residents of a small desert town (which you can find here).
