The Story of America: An Introduction

Four, four and seven years ago, our fathers crossed forces. Hello, I'm Larry Arne, president of Hillsdale College, and I am honored to welcome you to the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex. President President Trump wishes to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year with an open heart. The college is honored because it loves the Declaration of Independence. Our oldest building was dedicated on the 4th of July in 1853. Then the President of the college at that time, who became known to Abraham Lincoln, gave a speech in which he said, freedom and learning go together, and ignorance and slavery go together. One of the things we must do to commemorate anything, commemorate just means to remember together. First we have to know the thing, and we can't remember it very well if we don't know it very well. And so part of the purpose of this series of lectures is to remember. President Trump does this in part, I think. I don't speak for him, but the word again is important to him. He has a famous that I will not repeat here, but everybody knows what it is, and it ends with the word again. He wants to do something again, something already been done. He wants to see it happen again. This places him somewhere near the politics of Abraham Lincoln. I think George Washington did something for the first time, extremely honorable, including the defense of the Declaration of Independence on battlefields. Abraham Lincoln comes along later and he wants to restore all of that. He took the view that that was a very hard thing to do, but it wasn't a new thing to do. It was something that we should remember. And commemor. In introducing this series, I want to begin by encouraging you to read the Declaration of Independence. It's just over 1300 words long. It is one of the most consequential and beautiful political documents in all of history. You should read it again and again. You should memorize the beginning of it. It's very beautiful. It is grand and eternal and eloquent, and it reclaims the rights of us all. It begins universally when in the course. That means anytime one people, that means any people. It refers to the laws of nature and of nature's God. Those would be eternal laws, laws that we don't make, laws that are ever and forever the terms. The Declaration of Independence means that it's true now. If it was true then. It means that if it's not true now, it was not true then. It excludes any idea of a change in the fundamental conditions. Absorb that and then go on to the Next section. The next section raises some claims against the King of England that justify our revolution. The particular claim is that he has violated his rightful powers by invading the authority of the legislature, which indicates separation of powers would be right. And that he has interfered with representation, our ability to elect our government, which means consent of the governed, has been interfered with and he's interfered with the judicial branch, separation of powers, consent of the governed, representation, those things, the very structure of the Constitution of the United States later made to defend the principles and institutionalize the principles of the Declaration of Independence, according at least to those who wrote it and to later the very great Abraham Lincoln, if you learn those things, it's a sort of guide to the understanding of American politics. After the charges against the King comes a particular, also very beautiful final section that becomes so particular it is confined at the end to the actual people in the room voting to, quote, approve the Declaration of Independence. We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. It starts out with all eternity and it ends up with those people and that room and everything they have pledged to this eternal cause. It becomes the American cause, the cause of our people, formed under principles of all people by a resolution they made unto death to defend it. That I think is the foundation stone of America right there in the course of the American Revolution, In April of 1775, in two villages in Massachusetts, a bunch of people, first about 70, then maybe 3,500, were called out to fire the shot heard round the world. Several hundred British regulars were coming down the road to seize an arms depot, you might say, assert the might of the British Empire. And they gathered to stop them, and they did. They were organized to do that somehow. It wasn't just individuals rising up, they had already bound together to cooperate. It's a very stirring story and we have the marvelous Bill Maclay, a colleague of mine, a historian, tremendous teacher. He's one of our best. He's written many books. He fell in love in history a long time ago after a classical education. And I can bend one of his books in particular to you. I think the best one volume history of the United States ever written is called Land of Hope. Listen to him and enjoy and think about your liberties and their structure and the Declaration of Independence. This first lecture is about that shot heard around the world. It was April 19, 1775, and Bill Maclay will tell us about it. Sa.