What are the most significant dates in American history? The question makes a good parlor game, or just something to talk about while you're waiting for the fireworks to begin this evening. The answers may reveal less about history than about your own values and interests, and how they shape your pursuit of happiness, to borrow a phrase from the Declaration of Independence.
To get you started, here's a holiday assortment of select American dates, 17 of them. What others would you add to this highly opinionated, not to say idiosyncratic, almanac? Feel free to nominate them. More suggestions are available in any American history book.
1. October 12, 1492. Christopher Columbus, having sailed the ocean blue for some two months, sights land at last, and christens it San Salvador. The equilibrium of the continent will never be restored.
2. May 24, 1607. First permanent English settlement in the New World at Jamestown.
3. August, 1619. First black Africans arrive in Virginia, beating the Mayflower by a year.
4. December 21, 1620. The Pilgrims, those latecomers, choose Plymouth as the site of their settlement; half of them will die of disease within a year. But the core of the American character, culture and ethos has been put in place, to be reinforced and augmented by the great Puritan influx that would soon follow.
5. September 13, 1635. Roger Williams is banished from Massachusetts for teaching heresies like the separation of church and state.
6. February 10, 1763. Treaty of Paris ends the French and Indian War, assuring British domination of the continent. And explaining why this column is being written in English, or at least an American approximation of it.
7. July 4, 1776. Happy Birthday, America! After more than a year of war, the Continential Congress approves a Declaration of Independence proclaiming the revolutionary doctrine that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is still a revolutionary doctrine 238 years later.
8. September 17, 1787. Meeting in Philadelphia, delegates from the 13 still new American states give final approval to a proposed new constitution, "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man."--William Ewart Gladstone, 1878.
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
This miracle in Philadelphia showed it could be done. It is one thing to launch a revolution with high-flown phrases, another and greater thing to translate those ideals into a system that ever renews itself.
9. February 24, 1803. In Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall confirms the distinctive and decisive authority of the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the constitutionality of laws, a hallmark of the American system. The first and most important decision of any legal system is always: Who decides? On this date, John Marshall settled it. Though mumuring will persist whenever the court makes an unpopular decision.
10. February 2, 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican War and the West is now open all the way to California, from sea to shining sea.
11. March 6, 1857. A black day. The Dred Scott decision, largely by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, overturns the Missouri Compromise and declares Negro slaves nothing but chattel without citizenship, rights or hope. A curtain has been drawn over the American dream. The wrath of God and man will soon descend. For as Thomas Jefferson had foreseen, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
12. April 12, 1861. The bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. Big mistake. The shells that fall begin the greatest folly and tragedy in American history. On this date, Southern history ends, national history begins. And a plural becomes a singular: The United States of America no longer are, but is.
13. November 19, 1863. A new birth of freedom is proclaimed. Abraham Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg Address, and the Republic has a second, more concise Declaration of Independence.
14. December 7, 1941. Japanese attack Pearl Harbor on "a date which will live in infamy." FDR will soon notify the country that Dr. Win-the-War has replaced Dr. New Deal.
15. May 17, 1954. Brown v. Board of Education overturns racial segregation in the public schools and heralds a new birth of freedom, with all its travail and hope.
16. January 22, 1973. Roe v. Wade is decreed by the Supreme Court; the slaughter of the innocents begins. Jefferson's words still haunt: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
17. September 11, 2001. Another date which will live in that unending kingdom called infamy. Another kind of war is launched against us, and is To Be Continued--like history itself.
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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 07/04/2014