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From a fledgling republic to a global superpower, the United States has constantly reinvented itself over the last 250 years.
Americans have expanded democracy and driven innovation. They’ve also confronted war, economic upheaval and long struggles over equality and justice.
Now, the country faces a new era of uncertainty: Americans are debating the United States’ role in the world, losing faith in its institutions and grappling with deep political and cultural divisions. In this moment, the semiquincentennial gives us the opportunity to evaluate the latest iteration of America — and how we got here.
To mark America 250, we asked 11 historians and writers to reflect on the lessons U.S. history has taught us. They told us what grade they’d give the current state of American democracy, what it means to be an American today and what the country needs to last another 250 years.
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The Interviews
What makes someone an American in 2026?
Illustration of David Blight
David Blight
Professor of history at Yale University and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.
The first principle under which a person is determined to be an American is birthright citizenship, guaranteed by Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. From there, one is an American by some adherence to basic principles and values: a belief in the four first principles of the Declaration of Independence and ultimately in the rule of law. And an American sustains some faith in a social contract between citizens under the guiding rules of the U.S. Constitution. An active and engaged American possesses a sense of history, a sense of the triumphs and tragedies of the nation’s past. A true American has familiarity with and some dedication to the Bill of Rights — free speech, freedom of assembly, separation of church and state, freedom of petition and freedom of the press. And an American must at some point accept and embrace the Fifth Amendment, especially its due process provision, because without careful application of due process in our judicial system — despite its many interpretations and abuses over time — we cannot sustain genuine equality among our citizens regardless of race, class or wealth.
Colin Woodard
Director of Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy and the author of seven works of history, including Nations Apart: How Clashing Regional Cultures Shattered America.
We’ve been fighting over this since Day One. Are we just another nation defined by shared bloodlines, religion or history, or are we defined by our commitment to a set of ideals, the world-changing propositions about inherent rights of humans set forth in our opening statement as a people, the Declaration of Independence? If it’s the former, then we’re some form of ethnonationalist state, and only the people with the “right” characteristics can truly be American, like the “heritage Americans” Vice President JD Vance, U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri and whoever is running the Department of Homeland Security’s X account keep plugging: descendants of the (overwhelmingly white and Protestant) individuals who fought in the Civil War and participated in the conquest of Indigenous America.
But if it’s the latter, then there are no privileged bloodlines, no American Herrenvolk. It means we’re a civic nation and that anyone who is committed to the Declaration’s ideals — that every person has an equal right to survive, to not be tyrannized, to pursue their happiness as they understand it and to participate in our representative self-government — is a potential American. That doesn’t mean every person on the planet has a right to U.S. citizenship, but it does mean that U.S. citizenship is not predicated on belonging to a particular race, ethnicity or religion. That’s been our superpower for the past 150 years.
Illustration of Colin Woodard
Illustration of Woody Holton
Woody Holton
Professor of history at the University of South Carolina and the author of Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution.
I don’t think you’re truly an American unless you still have some of your immigrant spirit — even if your family has been here for multiple generations, as mine has. By immigrant spirit, of course, I mean hopefulness and a belief in hard work. But I also mean not just tolerating people different from yourself, but appreciating them. And most of all, I think the true American recognizes that we’re the only country on Earth founded not by some ethnic group but on a set of principles: respect for the rights of others, majority rule with minority protections and the rule of law, to name just a few.
Scott Stephenson
President & CEO of the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.
America was founded as a creedal nation, a departure from the lived experience of most human societies that existed before, and many that exist today. Rather than shared ancestry, ethnicity, language or religion, America announced at its birth in 1776 that a shared set of political principles would be the glue that would hold it together. It was an audacious experiment, constantly tested but enduring.
Abraham Lincoln eloquently (no surprise) expressed such an understanding of what it means to be an American in a speech in Chicago, Illinois, following the 4th of July 1858. Did the Declaration of Independence apply to those who were not personally descended from the Founding generation? How about people of African descent, free and enslaved, living in the nation? Without a doubt, Lincoln affirmed, reminding his audience that of roughly 30 million inhabitants, perhaps only half had that direct, family connection to 1776. “If they look back through this history,” he observed, “to trace their connection with those days of blood, they find they have none.” But America was not founded as a blood and soil nation, Lincoln argued. When new arrivals “look through that old Declaration of Independence,” they feel a connection to the very roots of their own moral principles, an “electric cord” linking patriotic hearts together across the centuries. American is a name you can claim.
Illustration of Scott Stephenson
How has America’s role in the world changed, and what is its role today?
Illustration of Todd Bennett
Todd Bennett
Professor of history at East Carolina University and co-author of The Flag Was Still There.
America’s role in the world, as I write in the summer of 2026, is ill-defined. Dependent on the whims of a famously mercurial president, it is by turns nationalist and neo-imperial, unilateral as well as transactional. According to a recent Council on Foreign Relations report, American grand strategy, to the extent that one currently exists, seems dedicated mostly to advancing the “personal preferences” of President Donald Trump.
At this point, it is easier to define what America’s role is not, as opposed to what it is. Under President Trump, the United States is not bound by diplomatic norms or customs. It is not committed to the liberal international order. And it certainly is not interested in promoting democracy or human rights — unless they involve the rights of white South Africans.
That is a big change from the recent past, when the United States participated, constructively, in a network of multinational organizations, alliances and treaties that comprised the post-World War II international order. That order, though now in disarray, was designed and led by the United States primarily to serve the nation’s interests and benefit its people.
Tevi Troy
Senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute and a former senior White House aide. He is the author of five books on the presidency, including The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry.
While America has always been a beacon of liberty, it was initially a fledgling nation and an uncertain experiment. Today, 250 years later, America is one of the world’s tentpoles. We are now one of the oldest constitutional republics on earth, and have operated under the same written Constitution longer than any other nation. Few people worry that America is going away, and more people than ever look to America for leadership. That transition from a new nation to the anchor of the world is one of the things we are celebrating this Independence Day. This great nation, conceived in liberty, still stands and is vital to the maintenance of freedom and commerce around the world.
Illustration of Tevi Troy
Illustration of Alan Taylor
Alan Taylor
Professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and author of two Pulitzer Prize-winning books, William Cooper’s Town and The Internal Enemy.
The United States emerged from a colonial revolution on the Atlantic margins of the European world. It began as a weak country, smaller in population, wealth and military power when compared to the great empires of Western Europe: Britain, France and Spain. But by the end of the 19th century, the United States had grown into the preeminent industrial power with a new overseas empire (Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines). That empire was controversial for it violated principles of self-determination that the United States had begun with. Over the course of the 20th century, the United States became a superpower, the first one with nuclear weapons.
At mid-century, the United States solidified its power and increased its influence by building a set of alliances, first and foremost NATO. Yet now in 2026, the current administration seems hell-bent to evade the responsibilities of alliance, devaluing and insulting NATO while pursuing the global projection of military power wherever and whenever whim takes our leader.
What does America need to last another 250 years?
Joshua Zeitz
Historian and the author of Lincoln’s God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation.
To survive another 250 years, America needs a third Reconstruction. The first rewrote the Constitution and transformed the meaning of American citizenship for everyone, not just the formerly enslaved. The second dismantled legal segregation and moved the nation closer to its professed ideals.
The next Reconstruction should be no less ambitious: renewing institutions that have lost public confidence, expanding opportunity, strengthening civic life and making the promises of American citizenship more real for millions who feel excluded from them. Every successful reconstruction has made the circle of belonging larger and the republic stronger. The next one should do the same.
Illustration of Joshua Zeitz
Illustration of Keisha Blain
Keisha Blain
Award-winning historian and professor at Brown University. She is the author of Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights and several other books on race, gender and politics in U.S. and global history.
One of the central challenges facing the United States is managing disagreement. Democratic societies survive and thrive when citizens can participate fully in the political process, confident that their ideas and values will be heard and respected even when they differ from those of others. The goal is not consensus or complete agreement. Rather, a democracy depends on broad participation and a shared commitment to democratic institutions and processes.
There are certainly many threats to American democracy today. Among the most significant is the growing lack of confidence in elections, courts, local government and other public institutions. A democratic society can remain strong only when citizens are actively engaged in civic and political life and trust that their participation matters. Efforts to protect voting rights and eliminate voter suppression are therefore among the most important steps toward strengthening American democracy over the next 250 years.
Finally, America will need a renewed sense of national purpose that is broad enough to accommodate profound differences. The United States has always contained competing visions of itself. What has sustained it is the belief that those disagreements can coexist. The next 250 years will require confidence that a free and diverse society is worth sustaining — and that its democratic ideals remain worth pursuing.
Greg Jackson
Author of Been There, Done That: How Our History Shows What We Can Overcome, host of the podcast “History That Doesn’t Suck,” and America250 Professor in Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University.
The United States of 2026 is dramatically different from what it was in 1776. Expanded territory, the rise and fall of political parties, 27 constitutional amendments that have rewritten the meaning of this Union and citizenship. Undoubtedly, America will change in far and unforeseeable ways by its quincentennial in 2276.
Yet, all of that change speaks to a constant. One that is exactly what the United States needs in order to make it to that 500th birthday bash.
That constant is a critical mass of engaged citizens practicing what the Founders called “public virtue.”
This isn’t simply voting once a year in November. Public virtue means making lifelong learning a habit. It requires critically assessing the media we consume (to put that in modern words — not relying on doomscrolling for our information). It means participating in the political process year-round, be that voting in primaries and caucuses or volunteering.
Crucially, public virtue means thinking of the public good. We must remember that our own individual liberties are best protected by protecting those same rights for our fellow Americans. We can shout, scream and fight over policy to that end — and we should — but that public good view must remain.
In short, I agree with young Lincoln’s assessment in 1838: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Whether or not we’re here in 250 years I can’t say — but it will be our decision.
Illustration of Greg Jackson
Illustration of Sheryll Cashin
Sheryll Cashin
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice at Georgetown University. She is working on a new book on how the Black American freedom struggle has been central to perfecting democracy.
Democracy and a renewed commitment to constitutionalism.
Lately the American people have been treated to assaults on once-settled constitutional norms. The Rule of Law. Separation of Powers. Due Process. Free Speech. The peaceful transfer of power. A government that protects rather than imperils its people. Democracy and civil society once shredded are not easily put back together, much less the government necessary to make a great and complicated nation and all its people thrive.
It took two constitutional amendments — the 15th and the 19th — and a long civil rights revolution to construct a robust multiracial democracy. That dramatic expansion of our democratic republic has been assaulted repeatedly. The arc does not automatically bend toward justice. America has always zigged and zagged between progress on equality and backlash from those unwilling to relinquish their ability to dominate others.
In a country where the rule of law and social norms of respect for constitutional rights are easily trampled, rights have no meaning. If “We the People” are to provide guardrails, democracy remains our only means — with all its practices of free speech, organizing, marching, nonviolent protest, petitioning, lobbying, litigating, legislating and voting.
No court, no military and no single leader can save a republic whose citizens abandon democratic responsibility. Rights survive only when people insist upon them. Democracy is not self-executing. Every generation must decide whether it will preserve the constitutional order it inherited or surrender it.
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The Lightning Round
1863, the year the tide turned against the Confederacy in the Civil War and the year the United States, following Lincoln at Gettysburg, began seriously contemplating making the Declaration’s liberal democratic vision its guiding purpose.
Illustration of Joshua Zeitz
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Stephenson
1776, no contest. Without the decision to declare independence and to express the principles on which the new nation would be founded, there is no story of us.
Cashin
1968, the year the Supreme Court and the Executive branch finally began to enforce Brown v. Board and the constitutional demand of equal protection, with alacrity. By 1980, the backlash was in full swing — and now, in 2026, the administration’s retreat on civil rights for minorities is complete.
Illustration of Joshua Zeitz
America is in many ways truer to its constitutional ideals than it was 50 years ago, but the corrosion of democratic norms and institutions over the past decade has been real and dangerous. We’re not failing outright, but we are backsliding.
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Woodard
Close to failure, but with still enough time in the term to claw back to a poor, but passing, grade.
Illustration of Keisha Blain
Blain
B-.
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Bennett
A gentleman’s B-. American democracy is getting by, albeit just barely. Still, the republic stands, and there’s something to be said for that.
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Stephenson
A “gentleman’s C.” One of the most concerning trends is the erosion of confidence in democracy, particularly among younger Americans. Rebuilding trust and civic participation should be a national priority.
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Jackson
Mediocre output from elected officials, enabled by underwhelming participation from voters.
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Troy
Not perfect but — echoing former U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill — better than all the alternatives.
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Holton
People still want government by the people, but they know they don’t have it, since elections are increasingly decided by dark money and billionaires.
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Blight
We still have elections, if we can resist the voter suppression planned all around us.
Illustration of Sheryll Cashin
Cashin
I give it a “C” — mainly because extreme gerrymandering, encouraged by SCOTUS, allows incumbents to pick their constituents and ignore everyone else. But the people seem to be rising up.
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Taylor
Current efforts to roll back citizenship and make voting more difficult and intimidating are great threats. But if the Senate fends that off, preserving the rights of states to manage elections — and if the voters have a fair opportunity to decide what sort of government they wish to have — then I’m more optimistic.
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The most underrated might be Dwight Eisenhower, who, facing Stalin at the height of the Cold War, put the country on a stable footing by retaining the essential elements of the New Deal order while intervening to undermine the American South’s apartheid system. The most overrated is Woodrow Wilson, who was even worse than you think, and, at Versailles, played a key role in creating the conditions for a second World War.
Taylor
Thomas Jefferson had many great abilities and accomplishments, but he was right to omit his presidency from his epitaph, as it did not go well, particularly in his second term. As for underrated, let’s go with William Howard Taft, who had his flaws but was very conscientious and effective until undermined by his former patron, Theodore Roosevelt.
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Zeitz
Harry S. Truman remains dramatically underrated. More than any president except Franklin Roosevelt, he shaped the American-led postwar order: a network of alliances, international institutions and economic cooperation that helped secure decades of prosperity, deter great-power war and sustain the world’s democracies.
Jim Crow segregation. We had the Reconstruction Amendments in place, and even after Reconstruction’s end with the Compromise of 1877, SCOTUS had the chance to right the ship with Plessy v. Ferguson. But it didn’t.
Holton
The war in Iraq. A very good friend of mine is still suffering from PTSD, as are thousands of other survivors. And it would not have happened if the administration had just told the truth about not finding weapons of mass destruction there. Dishonorable mention: War of 1812 (but fewer casualties).
Illustration of Joshua Zeitz
Illustration of Woodard
Cashin
The 2026 Iran War is an unauthorized war of choice, with an estimated $132 billion in costs, as of mid-June, to taxpayers and consumers for military spending, rising energy and commodity prices and interest rates, per Moody’s Analytics.
Unfinished
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Troy
Inspiring
Blight
Fractured
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Few individuals have done more to redefine American democracy than Fannie Lou Hamer. Her vision of freedom reached beyond the ballot box to encompass economic justice, human dignity and the full inclusion of marginalized people, making her one of the most influential political thinkers and activists of the 20th century.
Jackson
John Roebling: the man who dreamed up and died building the Brooklyn Bridge.
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Holton
Hermon Husband, who lived during the time of the American Revolution and heartily supported it, though as a Quaker he was also a pacifist. But Husband was interested in more than the conflict against Britain. He also fought for greater equality among Americans. For example, he thought every major issue should be put up for a popular vote. He was the penman of both the Regulator Rebellion in North Carolina before the Revolutionary War and the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania afterward.
The Imperial Presidency, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s 1973 examination of presidential power, ranks among those rare books that seem to grow more relevant with age.
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Illustration of Blight
Blight
Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. The book is arguably the greatest American work of literature about the arts of politics and the deep, abiding — indeed, tragic — elements of human nature that drive them.
Cashin
A Mercy, by Toni Morrison. She tells the story of four women in 17th-century colonial America, showing the shared oppressions of white indentured, Black enslaved and Native American people before rigid categories of race were constructed.
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Taylor
Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here, which has become all too timely.
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