When Was America Great?

This was an oft-asked question a couple of years ago. There was a political context that I’m not really interested in right now. I am, however, interested in the question.

When was America great?

It’s easy to look at the mistakes and weaknesses of individuals identified with America’s founding and assign those mistakes and weaknesses to the entire country. Or to the idea of the country.

One of my favorite historians said something like this (I’m paraphrasing), “It’s always a mistake to look to the past expecting to see the present.”

What he meant by that was events must be viewed within the context of the world as it was at the time.

What was the world like in 1776?

Most of the western hemisphere was considered the property of powerful European nations. Most of South America, Central America, and the western portion of North America belonged to Spain.

The lucrative islands of the Caribbean belonged to various European nations including Great Britain and France. All were ruled by monarchies where all power, or at least most as in the case of Great Britain, was held by one absolute autocrat.

Societies were composed of highly structured classes. If you were lucky, you were born into nobility and would likely live a life of ease and comfort. If unlucky, you were born into a lower class and would live in abject poverty. There was no real movement between classes.

Even George Washington experienced this. His early ambition was to make a career as a military officer. While serving General Braddock in the French and Indian War he learned that, although he was a lieutenant colonel in his Virginia regiment, he was outranked by even the lowest officer in the British Regulars.

Men from Britain were real British citizens, Washington was… (sniff, sniff) a colonial.

Slavery was common in many places of the world. Slaves farmed tobacco in the southern colonies, were ubiquitous in the money machine sugar colonies of the Caribbean. Serfdom was still legal in France until the French Revolution, years after America’s independence.

None of this makes it right. It defines the world in which great events happened.

The great events brought historical change. The idea that all men are created equal.

Was everyone able to live up to those ideals?

No. But the ideals still stood and there were enough people recognizing how far we still had to go, to keep the country laboring toward the realization of those ideals. That will never happen in a perfect way. But the closer we get, the better for all of mankind.

So, when was America great?

At least from the moment the Declaration of Independence was signed, committing a generation of Americans to working toward the ideals enshrined therein.