Optimism at America’s 250th
The word “Semiquincentennial” is linguistically optimistic. It doesn’t mean 250 down or complete. It means “half way” (semi) to “five hundred” (quincentennial). This anniversary is not an endpoint or a finish line; it is a call to action. It challenges us to look back across 250 full years of American history, to learn the lessons that we can, and to put ourselves to work bringing about an even stronger next 250 to come, because we are nowhere near done.
I spent the first five months of 2026 reflecting on the semiquincentennial with an incredible group of students while teaching in the George Washington University history department, with a course called “The American Revolution at 250.”
I started my students with a crash course on the history of the Revolution, and then we looked into how each successive generation and turning point in the last 250 years has commemorated, celebrated, or leveraged the legacy of the American founding moment.
We drew upon scholarship from a wide range of thinkers in the history, civics, and memory space. We read Michael Hattem’s Memory of 76, analyses from Yuval Levin on the constitutional structures at the foundation of our republic, and articles by Colleen Shogan on the importance of maintaining public engagement and civic spirit.
In many ways, students also got to bring their own experiences, education, and cultural exposures into consideration. In big and small ways, students had been exposed to the semiquincentennial in their lives, in their hometowns and of course around their campus in the nation’s capital.
I also encouraged them to ask their parents for memories from 1976 with the bicentennial celebration. Those conversations yielded stories about parades and fireworks. They heard about Operation Sail and the “tall ships” that sailed along the east coast. Some students’ parents, and my own mother, celebrated the anniversary in costume. My grandmother made a pair of revolution era dresses, recreated in bright and shiny 1970s polyester.
These experiences helped my students to make family connections and to investigate how popular memory is constructed and maintained. It also brought into focus that events big and small often go unremarked upon for decades before they are recalled to the surface. The celebrations of the bicentennial were not the stories that they grew up hearing from their parents about, but when the questions were asked, they found very interesting answers.
In my historical work, I try to do something somewhat similar, by noting what is absolutely remarkable about daily life. My scholarship into women newspaper printers during and after the era of the American Revolution often strikes audiences as remarkable. And I tend to agree that this fabulous group of determined, hard-working, and impactful historical characters deserve more attention - but not because of any sort of exaggerated, outsized legacy or blue-ribbon “first of their kind” award system.
They are remarkable in the way that they embodied the founding American spirit: they carried themselves through daily life with diligence, completed the tasks that had to be done, and met their responsibilities to sustain their families and inform their communities, with their heads down and their attention focused.
By living as exemplars of civic virtue and, as Laurel Thatcher Ulrich might say “behaving well,” they did not always make enough noise for history books to capture their impact. But I propose that this dedication to community building, to serving others because it is the right thing to do not because of the possible rewards or recognition, is really what this nation was built to enable.
In this 250th year of American independence, there may be uncertainty around the world and around the country – but the spirit of everyday Americans, who have for over two centuries faced challenges and solved problems for the sake of their communities are why I feel good about where we might go from here.
