Geoff Bennett:
As our country observes the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this year, Judy Woodruff is kicking off a new chapter in her series America at a Crossroads.
Amna Nawaz:
This year, she will explore what it means to be an American, how that idea has evolved since the nation’s founding, and where we might be headed.
She begins by looking at how closely our identity as Americans hews to the template created by war hero and first President George Washington.
Lindsay Chervinsky, Presidential Historian:
We refer to this as our smoking gun letter, because you can start to see him thinking about the fact that, because he’s an American, he’s actually a second-class citizen.
Judy Woodruff:
Inside a temperature-controlled vault, historian Lindsay Chervinsky is showing me a letter written by a then 25-year-old commander of the Virginia regiment, George Washington.
He’d been fighting alongside the British during the French and Indian War and was angry at the lack of royal commissions for him and his fellow Virginia officers.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
When you think about what it means to be a full-fledged citizen, we think about economic participation, political participation, but also can you advance on your own merits?
And he has this realization early that he’s not going to in the British system.
Judy Woodruff:
Nearly two decades before the American Revolution, Washington foreshadowed the collision with Britain that would lead to the creation of the United States and our identity as Americans, a question that, 250 years later, many continue to wrestle with.
Emily Chaffin, Mesa, Arizona:
Being an American means being able to pursue life liberty and happiness unimpeded.
Richard Watkins, Memphis, Tennessee:
Believing in those ideals that were set up at the founding of our nation, that’s what being an American is.
Judy Woodruff:
We asked our viewers about being an American and the responsibilities that come with that identity.
Jen Thissen, St. Paul, Minnesota:
In order to be a citizen, that is an active job description. You need to learn. You need to understand. And you need to participate.
Kathleen Sinclair Cannuli, San Jose, California:
To live by who got elected, all the various viewpoints that people have, you don’t have to embrace them, but you have to live with them.
Iain Burnett, Raleigh, North Carolina:
We are a nation of immigrants. And except for those that are fully Native American, at some point, in the last 15 generations, our ancestors immigrated here.
Tonya Baxter, Grapevine, Texas:
We’re the beacon on the hill. Everybody wants to come here. Everybody has opportunity, no matter who you are. Come, do your best, and you can succeed.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
There was never one answer to the question of, what is an American?
Judy Woodruff:
Chervinsky is the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library and the author of two books on the founding fathers, including “The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution.”
Lindsay Chervinsky:
They didn’t necessarily agree amongst themselves as to what was the ideal American, what was the right culture, the right religion, the right economy, who belonged in that equation.
And from the founding, of course, most people of color were excluded, most women were excluded, Native Americans were seen as sort of a separate entity. And then over the course of American history, this has evolved and changed. So it should give comfort to people that we have never had a clear answer.
Judy Woodruff:
After the Revolutionary War was over, Washington returned here to his estate at Mount Vernon.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
He had about 8,000 acres when he died.
Judy Woodruff:
The nascent nation was struggling under the weak Articles of Confederation. And in 1787, Washington became a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
The view that emerged was that this country, rather than 13 squabbling colonies, needed a strong central government. Why did George Washington come to believe that was the right answer?
Lindsay Chervinsky:
Well, they believed that they needed a strong central government, but they also believed that they needed what they called an energetic executive. Washington and many of the other military officers understood how inept Congress was, because it had failed to raise money for the army.
And so they really believed in a stronger national government. They were sort of early nationalists in a true sense of the word.
Judy Woodruff:
Washington supported ratification of the new Constitution that created branches of government, Congress in Article I and an executive or president in Article II.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
Everyone knew that, if this worked, he was going to be the first president.
Judy Woodruff:
No dissension?
Lindsay Chervinsky:
No dissension. Everyone knew.
And so when we look at Article II, it’s very short, especially compared to Article I. And I think and I think a lot of historians believe that a lot of the silence there is because they just figured he would figure it out once in office, and they trusted him to establish precedents and norms that would be good for the future of the nation.
Judy Woodruff:
As president, Washington was committed to civilian control of the military, the peaceful transition of power, and the idea that everyone is held to the same laws.
But as a wealthy landowner in Virginia, Washington also embodied the contradictions at the heart of our founding documents, including the idea that all men are created equal, while codifying enslaved people as unequal, including the more than 300 people enslaved by George and Martha Washington at Mount Vernon at the time of George Washington’s death in 1799.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
They continued to sort of buy and sell without thinking about the implications for the people that they were buying and selling until the revolution. And then, in the record, we can see a pretty distinct shift in how Washington thinks about slavery.
First, he is interacting with free Black communities in places like Philadelphia and Baltimore and Boston. He was also seeing different types of agricultural production. He also was interacting with ardent abolitionists, including the Marquis De Lafayette, who was very outspoken about his distaste for slavery.
But, lastly and I think most importantly, by the end of the war, some estimates suggest that about 30 percent of the Continental Army was Black.
Judy Woodruff:
In his will, Washington stated that the people on his estate that he controlled would be free upon his wife’s death.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
There’s a lot that he didn’t do. He didn’t speak out against slavery as president. He did continue to track down people who had run away. And it is in no way an excuse or a justification for all of the people that he did hold in bondage.
But he knew his will was going to be a public document, and he knew it was going to be a major statement.
Judy Woodruff:
Chervinsky sees Washington’s evolution on slavery as a reminder that the founding fathers expected things to change.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
They didn’t think what they were creating was perfect. They genuinely believed that they were trying to create something that was just a little bit better than what they had had before. They had all made compromises to try and ensure ratification.
And they understood that there were problems they were sweeping under the rug. They could not figure out how to solve the issue of slavery. They also knew that there were problems they couldn’t possibly foresee because they didn’t have the ability to predict the future.
And I think what they hoped was, even if the Constitution didn’t survive forever, that the republic would survive because each generation was willing to embrace that challenge to try and make the nation just a little bit better.
Veronica Williams, Paris, Tennessee:
We as Americans have found our way to pull up our bootstraps in times of dire need and in times of stress.
Emily Chaffin:
I believe the civil rights movement was an overall success, right. Women’s suffrage was a success. We can vote now. We have basic rights. I think that we still have a lot of work to do.
Akshay Singh, Tukwila, Washington:
I think the Congress should be expanded, the House of Representatives should be expanded to represent more people.
Richard Watkins:
We have really given up on filing amendments to make our system more adaptable to where the world is going, the way society is going, particularly now in the 21st century.
Elena Sotelo McCrary, San Ramon, California:
I’m still sad about the Equal Rights Amendment because that’s simple, two-paragraph language. If that had been adopted, it would have covered everybody.
Jen Thissen:
Thank you for your service, founding fathers. Great job, but now it’s time to evolve.
Judy Woodruff:
Modern polling tells us we are extremely divided along partisan lines, and while feelings of pride in being an American remain relatively high, they have fallen significantly from almost unanimous levels in the mid-’80s, and those declines in the last decade have mostly been among Democrats and independents.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
So this is Washington’s study. This was his most private space when he was here at Mount Vernon. It was where he did a lot of his thinking about the presidency, where he reflected on things like his farewell address.
Judy Woodruff:
In 1796, George Washington published a farewell address that first and foremost announced that he would not seek a third term as president.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
He believed it was essential that that first transition happen while he was alive and happen in an intentional way, so it would be less chaotic, but also so that he was establishing a precedent that presidents didn’t serve for life.
Judy Woodruff:
The address also provided warnings to his fellow Americans for the future, cautioning against foreign entanglements, regionalism, and partisanship.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
At this point, Washington wasn’t actually opposed to political organizing. He was saying, don’t allow political parties to break the bonds of citizenship.
Judy Woodruff:
It seems so prescient today…
Lindsay Chervinsky:
It’s unbelievably prescient.
Judy Woodruff:
… as we are so divided.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
Yes.
Judy Woodruff:
And, somehow, George Washington anticipated that.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
He did.
Our divisions and our partisan rancor have been something that have come up again and again over the course of the last 250 years. And so he was certainly living it in the 1790s. And I don’t know that he would have been terribly surprised that it came up again and again, but I do think that he would hope we could find a way to put that American identity above the others.
It was a revolutionary thing to do to form a nation based on an idea. Because it has survived and maybe we have become a little bit jaded about it…
Judy Woodruff:
Yes.
Lindsay Chervinsky:
… it doesn’t make it any less revolutionary.
Judy Woodruff:
This visit to Mount Vernon, reflecting on George Washington’s influence on the country to be, is just the start of our plan for a yearlong inquiry as America observes its 250th.
We will be sitting down with more people from across the country to ask how they see their role as Americans, especially at this deeply divided moment. And we will be looking for lessons from history to how we begin to reach that more perfect union.
For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Judy Woodruff in Mount Vernon, Virginia.
