In Pictures: A day for a bigger ‘us’ – and a bigger US
Children dressed in Colonial garb, including one posing as Benjamin Franklin, ride on a Fourth of July parade float in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 2021.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File
On the battlefield at Gettysburg in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln made a plea for which he would later give his life: “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
He was talking about something more than American democracy. Look at these photographs beautifully chosen by Monitor photographer Melanie Stetson Freeman. They tell a unique story.
There are other nations as wealthy as the United States – others as large, as free, as diverse. But there is no other nation that is all of these things together.
Why We Wrote This
Independence Day is a time for Americans to blow on the coals of their mutual love and loyalty and recognize something larger than themselves. These photos illustrate the many ways that patriotism shapes American culture.
That makes the United States an unprecedented experiment for the human race. Can a nation that reflects the world in all its diversity cohere? Can it thrive and remain free and grow?
The United States alone offers an answer. And for that reason, the U.S., with its “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” does not matter merely as a global power or a financial engine or a national identity. It matters because in its success or failure is a referendum for the world.
The historical tricorn hats. The patriotic hay bales. The trumpet player. The farm. The new citizens. The nostalgic diner. The Boy Scouts. The bold belt buckle. The Azalea Festival princess. In each of these powerful images are forces that would both bind and divide Americans. Differences of culture or region or race. Mutual pride or fellowship or joy.
In a profound though imperfect way, the founders made a statement that still echoes down the centuries: that devotion to larger ideals – of justice and freedom – can forge common cause even over deep and unyielding differences. Lincoln is almost universally viewed as the greatest American president for the conviction and humility of his devotion to this idea. To break apart – to say our differences can defeat our union – is to make a grave statement about more than a nation, but a hope of all humanity.
Independence Day is a time for Americans to blow on the coals of their mutual love and loyalty and recognize something larger than themselves. In its highest sense, a nation is not an expression of a single ethnicity or of a thousand clamoring political wills, but of the incomparable power of finding an ascending “us.”