Below, David McKean and Todd Bennett share five key insights from their new book, The Flag Was Still There: A History of the American Experiment in Five Anniversaries.
Todd is a professor of history at East Carolina University, specializing in 20th century American history. He was formerly a historian at the U.S. Department of State.
David is the former U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg and was director of policy planning in the Department of State.
What’s the big idea?
America’s 250th anniversary should be treated not merely as a celebration but as a chance to reflect on whether the nation is fulfilling its founding promises, drawing hope from the resilience Americans have shown in previous periods of crisis.
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1. Jubilees matter.
What are jubilees? It’s not a word we use often these days, at least not in the United States. Jubilees are milestone anniversaries—often fifty-year anniversaries. They have occupied a special place in the American experience since the early days of the republic, even though they are British imports: English monarchs began celebrating 50th anniversaries in the 14th century, a tradition that traces back to the Catholic Church, ancient Rome, and even the Old Testament.
Americans began celebrating jubilees in 1826, or “The year of Jubilee,” as President John Quincy Adams declared it. Ever since, Americans have paused in 50-year increments to celebrate but also to reflect on the status of the American experiment. They have done so because anniversaries, especially 50-year anniversaries, offer natural moments for reflection on where we are as a nation, how we arrived at our current state, and, crucially, what we might do moving forward to achieve our goals.
Who are we? How did we get here? Where do we want to go moving forward? Americans have paused every 50 years—in 1826, 1876, 1926, and 1976—to reflect on those questions. And we will do much the same again in 2026.
That’s why jubilees matter. Because they serve as waystations to gauge the success of the American experiment and to adjust course, as needed.
2. Patriotism is more than flag-waving.
The United States has yet to achieve the grand vision laid out in the Declaration of Independence. Serious inequality remains between black, brown, and white Americans; men and women; and wealthy and working people. Rights are being rolled back. And democratic institutions are under siege.
But the aspirations expressed in 1776—human equality; unalienable rights; government of the people, by the people, and for the people; and much else besides—unleashed a democratic assault on privilege that drove the American experiment for the next two-plus centuries. Civil rights, women’s rights, and other activists invoked them time and again to advance the cause of human dignity.
“The United States has yet to achieve the grand vision laid out in the Declaration of Independence.”
Today, those words remain essential because they serve to hold power to account—to remind us of the wide and, it seems, growing gap between American principles and American realities. Without the founding ideals of 1776, it arguably would be more difficult to call for change by exposing autocratic and dehumanizing practices for what they are: un-American.
Take, for example, the words of Barbara Jordan, the first southern African American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, who said in 1974, regarding the impeachment of President Richard Nixon: “My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total.” Though her ancestors, she noted, had not been included in the framers’ definition of “We, the people” some 200 years earlier, “through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, [she and people like her had] finally been included in ‘We, the people.’” And Jordan expressed her determination to hold power to account in 1974 because, as she put it: “I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.”
That’s patriotism.
3. How 2026 is different from previous jubilees.
My coauthor and I did not know when we began writing the book what the country’s situation would be like in 2026. Regardless, we figured that providing a long-term perspective would be valuable at a time when the United States is at a crossroads. According to polls, more than 60 percent of Americans feel that the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Independence Day has always been political. The Declaration of Independence itself was a political act, and ever since, July Fourth speeches have followed its lead—either echoing its grievances, laying out a vision for a better America, or both.
President Trump’s apparent effort to use the nation’s milestone birthday to further his personal and political brand recalls the earliest days of the republic, when partisan feeling ran so strong that Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans held separate July Fourth events!
“According to polls, more than 60 percent of Americans feel that the country is headed in the wrong direction.”
Since then, July Fourths have generally been seen as moments not of national division but of national unity, when Americans put aside their differences for a moment to celebrate together, irrespective of party.
The closest analog to Trump’s effort in recent memory is that of Richard Nixon—who, remember, was supposed to have been president in 1976. Nixon attempted to turn the Bicentennial into a partisan affair. When he assumed office in 1969, he fired the sitting members of the federal Bicentennial planning committee—a bipartisan mix of Democrats and Republicans, along with expert advisors—and replaced them with contributors to his 1968 campaign. The commission’s director, a Nixon ally, wrote, in a confidential memo, of his determination to use the Bicentennial to advance the political interests of both Nixon and the Republican Party.
But that memo was leaked along with other files to the Washington Post, which in 1972 published a four-part exposé of the commission’s secret attempt to politicize and commercialize the Bicentennial. The commission was scrapped, replaced by a new federal planner that, under President Gerald Ford, a moderate Republican, went on to depoliticize the Bicentennial, emphasizing national unity and reconciliation in 1976 in the aftermath of Watergate and the divisive Vietnam War.
4. The 50-year view.
American history is often told in chronological order, from beginning to end. But, with an eye toward 2026, we thought it would be revealing to look instead at American history in 50-year intervals, starting in 1776 and continuing through the 1826 Jubilee, 1876 Centennial, 1926 Sesquicentennial, and 1976 Bicentennial.
Though unconventional, this approach would allow us to perform a sort of longitudinal study. Longitudinal studies are sometimes used by physicians, sociologists, and documentarians to understand change over time by repeatedly observing the same individuals at predetermined intervals. We thought this method could be productively employed to better understand the American experience.
Stopping time every 50 years comes at the expense of nuance: the jubilees don’t necessarily coincide precisely with seminal events in American history. Certainly, most of what Americans regard as the country’s important historic events began and ended on days other than July Fourth and in years that didn’t end in 26 or 76.
But stopping history at certain points allows one to measure change—or the lack thereof—over time. The jubilees act as yardsticks to chart the nation’s growth—geographically, demographically, and economically but especially in terms of achieving the country’s founding principles. In that regard, the anniversaries show progress…but also retreat.
5. America’s jubilees tell a story of hope and resilience.
The state of the union is not good. Democratic institutions are under siege. Polls show that Americans—Republicans and Democrats alike—are losing faith in the nation’s future.
But our research shows that the American project in democratic self-government has come under attack before. The 1876 Centennial saw Reconstruction ending without the inclusion of African Americans in the body politic on a full and equal basis, despite the Civil War. In 1926, virulent nativism was at a peak, and a reemergent Ku Klux Klan was marching unmasked in the nation’s capital. The 1976 Bicentennial found the nation struggling with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, political doubt following the Watergate scandal, and fallout from a divisive war in Vietnam. Each time, though, the nation—and the liberal values that hold us together as Americans—endured.
“Democratic institutions are under siege.”
Past performance, as financial planners say, is no guarantee of future success. 2026 is unlike previous jubilee years in many ways. But the long view of American history reveals a story of resilience. And my coauthor and I take some hope in the knowledge that Americans will gather on July Fourth to mark the nation’s journey, much as they have every July Fourth since 1776.
We are reminded of the words of Abraham Lincoln who, as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1858, spoke of the Declaration of Independence as an “electric cord” that connected generations of “patriotic and liberty-loving [Americans].” July Fourth, he said, serves as an annual reminder of all the good that has been done in the name of the Declaration’s ideals. Americans come away from these annual reminders, he said, “in better humor with ourselves,” more connected with one another, and more committed to completing the nation’s unfinished work.
May that be true in 2026.
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