On Jan. 2, 1776, an officer in the Revolutionary army, Stephen Moylan, writing to a fellow officer, Joseph Reed, first invoked the term “United States of America.”
He was anticipating what the war would make a reality: that a series of colonies established by the British Empire would accomplish two history-making marvels. This recently organized citizen’s army of patriots would actually win their independence from the greatest empire of the 18th century. And while accomplishing this military miracle, they would forge diverse peoples, interests and cultures occupying half a million square miles into a unified experiment in democracy.
That great experiment was formally launched 250 years ago, when John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson and a host of less famous names — John Hart, William Whipple, James Smith and four dozen other ministers, farmers and printers (and one musician) — put their signature to the words that still stir the heartstrings: “these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.”
It took six years of armed conflict to establish that dream of independence. Even conflicts that are won by force of arms, however, originate in, are fueled by and are decided by, the relative strength of the values people hold. Those values are framed by language, but that does not make them any less powerful in giving shape to who a people are, what they are willing to live and die for, and what makes them a good and virtuous people.
Our Founding Fathers and Mothers knew a great nation depends upon great virtue, and our founding documents presented Colonial Americans with a set of values that fired their hearts, inspired them to risk their lives and honor, and saw them through terrible years of violence, want and uncertainty about their future. At this time when we celebrate our founding and praise our founders, it is fitting that we revisit just what values they believed lie at the foundation of America.
I’ve long thought about how I can best do just that, particularly during this special occasion of America’s semiquincentennial. So, starting next week, I will embark on a 250-mile trek, starting near the northernmost part of our state, and ending in my hometown of Provo, Utah, at the Stadium of Fire on the Fourth of July.
Averaging roughly 30 miles each day, I will travel through communities large and small, meeting Utahns along the way and reflecting on the values that shaped our nation and defined our true culture and character.
Values matter, and it is our sacred obligation to speak to those values, to act in recognition and support of those values, and to reflect more deeply upon their meaning in our history and our lives.
I have another heritage to which I will be paying tribute. Later this month — on July 24 — the state of Utah officially recognizes the arrival of the first Mormon pioneers into the Utah Territory. The tradition of celebrating that arrival began in 1849.
And here is a lesson for our time: As part of that celebration by a destitute group of Latter-day Saints who had been forcibly exiled from the United States, they flew the American flag, gave patriotic speeches and publicly read the Declaration of Independence.
The Latter-day Saints had proclaimed just a few years earlier, “Be it ordained by the City Council of the City of Nauvoo, (Illinois). That the Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, … Quakers, Episcopalians, Universalists, Unitarians, Mohamedans, and all other religious sects, and denominations, whatever, shall have toleration, and equal privileges in this city.” Yet within a few short years of this proclamation, the Latter-day Saints themselves had been driven out of their city and their country at bayonet and canon point.
Incredibly, they continued to hold fast to their faith in the principles of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, affirming their commitment through public celebrations and readings of that latter document from their place of exile.
They persevered through their journey westward and flourished in their new communities, guided by the words they found there: liberty, equality, magnanimity, duty, honor, respect and other virtues singled out as constituting the soul of this ongoing experiment in democracy.
Over the nine days of my journey, I will highlight several of these values, and how we can embody them in personal and in civic life. I don’t believe that the only power that operates on people and communities is the power of arms, armies and missiles. I don’t think Americans believe this either. Values matter, and it is our sacred obligation to speak to those values, to act in recognition and support of those values, and to reflect more deeply upon their meaning in our history and our lives.