David Hackett Fischer: One New World, Two Big Ideas
[David Hackett Fischer, who teaches history at Brandeis University, is the author of “Washington’s Crossing” and the forthcoming “Champlain’s Dream.”]
THIS week, we the people of North America are staging two celebrations. The Fourth of July is the 232nd birthday of the United States, and it will be observed as John Adams prescribed in 1776: a “day of deliverance” in more ways than one, with “solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty ... pomp and parade ... shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”
In Canada, today, another ceremony will mark the 400th anniversary of Quebec City, the first permanent settlement in New France. The ancient city has organized a party that John Adams could not have imagined, with months of festivities, fireworks and performances. And this morning, at precisely 11, the hour when Samuel de Champlain and company were thought to have landed at Quebec, bells will peal across Canada, from Newfoundland to Vancouver.
These “great anniversary festivals,” as Adams called them, are about many things. They commemorate the founding of new societies and the formation of cultures that flourish today. But they also celebrate ideas, which are the true touchstones of our way of life, more than any material foundation. Richard Hofstadter wrote of the United States that “it has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.” He seemed to think it was a form of “American exceptionalism,” ugly words for an erroneous thought. Not so. The same might be said in a different way of Canada and Quebec. In each place, ideas grew from dreams of “prevoyant” people, to borrow Champlain’s word.
In the United States, July 4 is about a great idea in the Declaration of Independence — its vision of liberty and freedom, equality and self-government. The Continental Congress gave Thomas Jefferson a difficult task: frame a vision of liberty and freedom that all could accept.
Most Americans believed passionately in liberty and freedom, but they understood those ideas in very different ways. Town-born New Englanders had an idea of ordered freedom and the rights of belonging. Virginia’s cavaliers thought of hierarchical liberty as a form of rank. Gentleman freeholders had much of it, servants little, and slaves nearly none.
Quakers in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey believed in a reciprocal liberty of conscience in the spirit of the golden rule. African slaves thought of liberty as emancipation. Settlers in the Southern backcountry understood it as a sovereign individual’s right to be free from taxes and government, and to settle things his own way: Don’t tread on me!
In 1776, Jefferson’s job was to bring together these Americans who were united by their passion for liberty and freedom, but divided by their understanding of those ideas. ...
[HNN: Champlain's idea? Tolerance of diversity.]
Read entire article at NYT
THIS week, we the people of North America are staging two celebrations. The Fourth of July is the 232nd birthday of the United States, and it will be observed as John Adams prescribed in 1776: a “day of deliverance” in more ways than one, with “solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty ... pomp and parade ... shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”
In Canada, today, another ceremony will mark the 400th anniversary of Quebec City, the first permanent settlement in New France. The ancient city has organized a party that John Adams could not have imagined, with months of festivities, fireworks and performances. And this morning, at precisely 11, the hour when Samuel de Champlain and company were thought to have landed at Quebec, bells will peal across Canada, from Newfoundland to Vancouver.
These “great anniversary festivals,” as Adams called them, are about many things. They commemorate the founding of new societies and the formation of cultures that flourish today. But they also celebrate ideas, which are the true touchstones of our way of life, more than any material foundation. Richard Hofstadter wrote of the United States that “it has been our fate as a nation not to have ideologies but to be one.” He seemed to think it was a form of “American exceptionalism,” ugly words for an erroneous thought. Not so. The same might be said in a different way of Canada and Quebec. In each place, ideas grew from dreams of “prevoyant” people, to borrow Champlain’s word.
In the United States, July 4 is about a great idea in the Declaration of Independence — its vision of liberty and freedom, equality and self-government. The Continental Congress gave Thomas Jefferson a difficult task: frame a vision of liberty and freedom that all could accept.
Most Americans believed passionately in liberty and freedom, but they understood those ideas in very different ways. Town-born New Englanders had an idea of ordered freedom and the rights of belonging. Virginia’s cavaliers thought of hierarchical liberty as a form of rank. Gentleman freeholders had much of it, servants little, and slaves nearly none.
Quakers in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey believed in a reciprocal liberty of conscience in the spirit of the golden rule. African slaves thought of liberty as emancipation. Settlers in the Southern backcountry understood it as a sovereign individual’s right to be free from taxes and government, and to settle things his own way: Don’t tread on me!
In 1776, Jefferson’s job was to bring together these Americans who were united by their passion for liberty and freedom, but divided by their understanding of those ideas. ...
[HNN: Champlain's idea? Tolerance of diversity.]