America - 250 Years

America turns 250 years old today. What a milestone, huh?

Simply put, we've seen a ton happen in America over the many years it's been around, but it would take either a history course or a few history books to get the full details of what went down at this point. So, for the sake of refreshing our memories, allow me to run through what stood out to me about the U.S.A. throughout its two hundred and fifty years in the running.

It all started with the original colonists, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, etc., who settled on the new land in hopes of a better life. Fed up with the constant tax charges imposed by King George III, they resorted to any means necessary to express their distaste for England’s overreach, including the Boston Tea Party, in which the colonists dressed as Indians and tossed the imported British tea overboard. They all decided to break off their allegiance to the British Crown and form their own sovereign nation with the Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4th, 1776, by the thirteen Colonies. After they all signed the document and made it official, of course, this breach from the British Crown soon escalated into what we now call the Revolutionary War, with both the American and British generals gaining the upper hand until America ultimately overpowered them and became its own country within a few years.

© Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze

Shortly after America became its own country, the Founding Fathers began to formulate a set of laws to institutionalize throughout the Colonies, which became the Constitution. But after setting that in place, they decided to tweak it further, depending on what needed to be changed or added, to keep the set of laws flexible and fit for the needs of its citizens. So, the Founding Fathers next introduced the Bill of Rights, which consists of the Constitution’s first ten amendments. From then on, over fifteen new amendments have been added to the Constitution with the original ten, some of which I'll mention here in this overview.

Later on, the desire to explore much of the land for their own gain soon expanded westward in a mission they called Manifest Destiny. They went far out in the West and explored all kinds of rich lands and new territories, even if it meant running headfirst into many native tribes along the way, whom the settlers initially deemed savage, unruly, and unfit to share the same lands as them.

But let's look at one reason the expansion across the West began to unfold. What also went on was what occurred down south as the southern states of America, including Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, both Carolinas, and Georgia, began to form their own government called the Confederate States of America. One of their primary resources was the labor of slavery, mainly of African Americans. With them handy, the owners and plantation owners alike would rely on them to do their chores, including picking cotton. But because the northern states automatically allowed African American people to be inducted into the country as free citizens, just like every other American, this led to them butting heads. Their desires to wage war on one another intensified, partially thanks to Solomon Northup's memoir of his time in the Confederacy, 12 Years a Slave. Furthermore, after Abraham Lincoln became President in 1861, he saw it fit to initiate the 13th Amendment, which would have abolished slavery and thus rendered the ownership of people as slaves unconstitutional. Though it led to conflicting mindsets, it gave the United States of America a huge advantage, allowing it to conquer the Confederacy. But it also resulted in the tragic assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth in 1865.

Shortly after the Confederacy was dissolved, the right to vote expanded with the 15th Amendment, passed in 1870, which allowed people of all races to vote. The same thing happened later in 1920, when the 19th Amendment extended the right to vote to women, too.

Another reason for Americans to tour out West under Manifest Destiny was the chance to mine for additional minerals, including copper, silver, and especially gold. Much like how Christopher Columbus and his people sought gold upon their settlement in the New World, the promise of freedom and the pursuit of wealth drove those who set forth into the West into a frenzy. It resulted in them establishing settlements across the western half of the nation, which, in turn, paved the way for many other territories to eventually join the thirteen Colonies into becoming part of a whole country.

The latest of the states, Alaska and Hawaii, were inducted into the United States of America in 1959, bringing the total number of American states from an originating 13 as Colonies to 50 as states.

© American Progress by John Gast

Another wave of interest that resulted from this search was the Gold Rush, which, of course, led to some people not making it or being short-sheeted with pyrite, or fool's gold.

In 1876, in honor of America's centennial, France constructed what is now the Statue of Liberty as a token of their friendship, and it was officially established in New York City in 1886, where it currently resides, but not without undergoing an inevitable color change from its original bronze color to its green color. It was erected as a beacon of hope for anyone across the world to find a new place to call home. As Lady Liberty's tablet reads,

Give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Of course, though the immigrants were treated with more discrimination than everyone else in the country, it did not change the fact that the initiative behind inviting immigrants to settle into our country was one of nobility and charity.

However, while America enjoyed its moments of prosperity throughout the 1890s, it soon found itself on the brink of moral conflict as it engaged in a worldwide battle against enemy nations in what was then called the Great War. Now, we look back on it as World War I. Allying with countries like Great Britain, France, and Portugal, President Woodrow Wilson waged war against Germany in 1917 when American submarines were subject to their sudden attacks, as a means to unleash a 'war to end all wars' and safeguard America's principles and democratic beliefs. But it only got worse for America: as the 1910s neared their end, while they were still serving in World War I, they also had to contend with the Spanish Flu, which was reportedly one of the worst epidemics in recorded history. Fortunately, the pandemic soon died off, and America managed to prevail over its enemy forces.

It, in turn, led to peace and prosperity among many Americans, who celebrated their victory and indulged in their celebratory lifestyles during what is now known as the Jazz Age. The mere aspects and personality usually associated with this mindset were captured by many artists, including musician George Gershwin and author F. Scott Fitzgerald, most notably in his masterpiece The Great Gatsby.

One of the most unusual instances of the Constitutional Amendments being put into place only to be later rescinded all concerned alcohol. Initially, the 18th Amendment prohibited alcoholic beverages from being shipped to or sold in America, kickstarting the Prohibition Era. However, it led to plenty of undercover gangs illegally circulating the drinks, which was famously highlighted through the efforts of the notorious Chicago mafia leader Al Capone. However, in 1933, the 21st Amendment rectified it by nullifying any prohibition on alcoholic beverages, and thus illegal activities surrounding the formerly illegal importation of such beverages.

© Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange

Unfortunately, the frivolities in which the Americans indulged throughout the 1920s came to a head when the spending led to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, setting off a chain of events that contributed to what is now called the Great Depression. Many people were left homeless, and they could barely get by with what they had left. But it wasn't until President Franklin D. Roosevelt came along and picked up the pieces of the Great Depression to help America back on its feet.

Luckily, he had done so in the nick of time, for World War II was raging on in other parts of the world, with one of the biggest culprits of this war being Emperor Hirohito of Japan, Benito Mussolini of Italy, and above all, Adolf Hitler, who introduced a controversial and now systemically vile order throughout Germany called Nazism. But it did not take America until a certain bombing of Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japan for them to partake in World War II and join Great Britain and France in their war against Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Fascist Italy. After a series of events, including the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by America and the enemy forces closing in on Germany, it resulted in Adolf Hitler taking his own life and the Allied forces winning World War II.

Furthermore, this was the only time in American history that a President held office longer than any other. Franklin D. Roosevelt was President in 1933 and served his four-year term three times in a row until he left office in 1945, around the end of World War II. The 22nd Amendment, passed in 1951, ensured that any President elected to office would serve no more than two four-year terms in a row.

However, during these unimaginable times, one sculptor, named Gutzon Borglum, had a theoretically ambitious vision: to carve a handful of the most significant presidents in American history on the side of a mountain in South Dakota. This project lasted 14 years, starting on 1927 and wrapping up in 1941. Sadly, however, it was due to Borglum passing away shortly before he could’ve overseen his project’s completion. Thus, the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln were carved into Mount Rushmore, and it became as synonymous with America as the Statue of Liberty herself.

And there’s one thing I agree with most other people about this monument. If a fifth president should ever have the honor of joining the original four on Mount Rushmore, it should be Franklin D. Roosevelt. Admittedly, I cannot help but envision John F. Kennedy joining them, too, somehow.

It resulted in another long period of peace and prosperity into the late 1940s and across the 1950s. This was where a good chunk of the Baby Boomers' childhoods originated, with the playtime out in the yards and likely behind the white picket fences. However, it was far from perfect, for one of its other problems back then was its emphasis on racism, which began to be taken notice of more back then, along with the blacklisting of certain people who claimed to be Communist in their beliefs.

See, America was fearful and suspicious of people under Communist beliefs because, during World War II, their pursuits against Nazi Germany caused the United States to butt heads with the Soviet Union, which was what Russia used to be beginning in 1922 before going back to being Russia in 1991. But their differing pursuits led them to look at each other suspiciously, not helped by their expertise in nuclear warfare, and to one-up each other in a long-running war called the Cold War.

It all mounted up and blew up throughout the 1960s, when President John F. Kennedy proposed, among other things, that America take the initiative in its race against the Soviet Union to land the first man on the Moon. Unfortunately, on November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot in the middle of a parade in Dallas by Lee Harvey Oswald.

It resulted in a chain reaction of multiple different revolutions erupting across the country. One was the Civil Rights Movement; after having had enough of their country's systemic abuse, African Americans decided to stand up and challenge the Americans' treatment of them as fellow Americans. Many Americans were also not supportive of the Vietnam War; they resented the idea of young Americans being automatically drafted into a war of the country's choosing and were thus drafted into a war they did not want to partake in, resulting in an anti-war mentality. Speaking of anti-war, it gave way to many free-style movements throughout the 1960s, including the Hippie movement and the Psychedelic movement.

© NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon by Neil Armstrong

However, after going through some downhill turns of events, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and even Robert Kennedy, America and the rest of the world found themselves at a loss for words when they finally witnessed Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong achieve the impossible and fulfill John F. Kennedy's promise to become the first human beings to ever land on the Moon, to land elsewhere in the galaxy that wasn't Earth. It originated from a series of space missions called Apollo, in which each trip to the Moon would have determined what else they could investigate there. Aldrin and Armstrong's mission was Apollo 11, followed by additional missions that culminated in Apollo 17 in 1972. One of those missions, Apollo 13, almost ended in disaster if it weren't for the quick, clever thinking of the stranded astronauts who had to figure out how to abort their mission and make it back home. It was then reflected on as 'the successful failure'.

However, one of the biggest scandals in American history occurred in the 1970s when President Richard Nixon was accused of governmental fraud at Watergate, resulting in the Watergate scandal that officially denounced Richard Nixon as the President via impeachment.

Later, in the 1980s, the Cold War began to rage on once again as the already heated conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union reached a whole other level. President Ronald Reagan, a former actor, did his absolute best to order the initiative of maintaining America's stronghold against the Cold War, resulting in America gaining the upper hand against the Soviet Union by 1991. One result of this was the demolition of the Berlin Wall, which had split Berlin and the rest of Germany in two shortly after World War II.

In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton, just like Richard Nixon, found himself in the throes of controversy when sex scandals against him and fellow intern Monica Lewinsky began to surface. And the televised event of O.J. Simpson during his chase by the police and as he finally confessed to his crimes became a televised phenomenon, for it established a public way of interpreting crime trials when looked at through television. Later on, as the end of the 1990s and, by extension, the end of the first millennium approached, everyone panicked and assumed that the end of 1999 would trigger a phenomenon known as Y2K. In this event, every single digital device on Earth that displayed numbers would automatically malfunction and reset upon entering the very first day of the new millennium, January 1st, 2000, thereby initiating the end of the world. Luckily, however, that was all just a conspiracy theory that amounted to nothing, and America, along with the rest of the world, went on with life as normal with a renewed sense of hope.

Unfortunately, however, that hope became ultimately dashed when the World Trade Center in New York City was bombed by enemy planes that crashed into the Twin Towers and into the Pentagon, with the towers collapsing and killing around 2,000 people. Meanwhile, however, the fourth hijacked plane, United 93, which was about to hit the Capitol, was steered clear away from its course, and the passengers became retrospectively hailed as heroes for averting what could have been an unimaginable disaster. This turn of events led then-President George Bush to initiate the War on Terror against the terrorist groups of the Middle East, which had gone on for years.

However, America also experienced a period of economic stagnation in 2008, which was later described as one of the worst economic downturns in American history since the Great Depression. But it did end on a happier note in May 2010, when the American troops finally tracked down the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, and executed him for his crimes against humanity.

Later on, President Barack Obama introduced a new healthcare system throughout America called Obamacare, which would have guaranteed lower-or-middle-income Americans some automatic health care when they couldn't otherwise. Of course, this was seen as a controversial introduction to the American way of life. Soon after, America entered even touchier waters by the time Donald Trump assumed the title of POTUS.

But even that did not compare to the major standstill in 2020 caused by the widespread COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic, which left America and the rest of the world hunkering down in hopes of staying healthy. Fortunately, however, just like the Spanish Flu, the pandemic did not last long before it fizzled out, and America, along with the rest of the world, did its thing as usual.

But while the presidency of Donald Trump was controversial enough, it amounted to a sudden attack on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021, initiated by people who believed that there was a case of election fraud apparent from the Capitol. And the political scandals continued into the 2020s, not only when Joe Biden assumed the presidency, but also when Donald Trump resumed the presidency in 2024. This return was so controversial that even before Trump had a chance to be nominated as President, he had the misfortune of having his right ear pierced by an incoming bullet that was meant for him in Pennsylvania, as he and his troops had to evacuate for safety.

Do I acknowledge some major flaws that America had to grapple with? Of course I do. Am I gonna act like the country had always been free of setbacks in its promises and attempts of progress? No. But that wouldn't make me love America any less. It does not change the fact that what America stood for in terms of its goals, motives, ideals, and aspirations mattered a great deal because that's what everyone who lived in this country believed in profoundly. How many countries or nations can we think of that started as kingdoms, empires, or any other sort of government? America had been one of a few that I know of that started with one of arguably the noblest purposes of them all: to provide a free nation for its people and the promise of freedom for all who live there.

I acknowledge that some parts of our country are still grappling with obstacles they may not have anticipated, even in the midst of such a major milestone as this, and are still doing their best to resolve such dilemmas. All I ask is that these people be given the help and support they need as we all try to resolve them as smoothly and with as little damage as possible. In the meantime, anybody who has the privilege to call themselves an American ought to express their gratitude for living in a country that promises freedom, welfare, and the promise of a prosperous future ahead of them.

So, as we celebrate America's 250th birthday, what more must we say about this except for this classic hymn?

Oh, say, can you see by the dawn's early light

that so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming

whose broad stripes and bright stars who the perilous fight

o'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?

By the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air

gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.

Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

over the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Happy 4th of July, everyone, and God bless the United States of America. Let’s see where the next 250 years will take us as a nation.

Works Cited

Key, F. S. (1814). The Star Spangled Banner.

Lazarus, E. (1883). The New Colossus.