Teaching America 250: Telling the Whole Story
Declaration of Independence (1819), by John Trumbull
“Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Abraham Lincoln said those words at Gettysburg in 1863—reminding everyone not only that the United States’ existence began with the Declaration of Independence, but also that we were founded on its twin principles of liberty and equality.
In 2026 we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration. (For those keeping track, that’s twelve score and ten years.) Today, most accept that the Declaration marked the beginning of the nation’s official existence, but many doubt that we were really founded on liberty and equality. In your classrooms, you might hear students say we were founded on slavery and inequality. They probably didn’t come by those ideas themselves. Ever since the beginning of the American experiment in self-government, there have been those who disagreed with Lincoln’s understanding of what the Founders believed. Now they can be found in all corners of the internet, ready for students to stumble across them and begin to doubt the American Founding.
Sometimes, those people have wanted the Founders to be evil. Think Roger Taney, who wrote the infamous Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford to justify racist policies. Often, these days, they hate the American Founding and believe the talk of liberty and equality was all rhetoric; they might disagree about what, exactly, the Founders really wanted, but they agree it was bad, and that the Founding must have been bad.
As these conversations come up for the 250th, it’s tempting to deflect. These are big subjects, and you might feel unprepared to handle them in the classroom. Instead, we should lean in. Approach the American Founding with confidence. You can do this with two key methods: Primary sources and unblinking honesty. By using the words of the people who lived at the time, we can challenge students to go beyond the narrative they’ve heard online. Ask them: What did people really think? And then, without shrinking from an honest discussion of the issues, follow up with the Founders’ actions. Put the students in the Founders’ shoes and have them grapple with the same questions, the same practical political problems, that the Founders did. With these methods, you can show students the truth, not just the narrative.
Liberty and equality were not convenient slogans meant to paper over injustice. They were standards the nation set for itself, and standards Americans have argued over from the beginning. Teaching the Founding well means showing students how those ideals were asserted, disputed, violated, and expanded to create the nation we know today.
How to leverage primary sources
Unfortunately, there’s rarely time for teachers to do a deep dive into primary sources. There’s too much material to cover and not enough time in the day (or, often, in the curriculum). But this powerful teaching tool is still critical to how we approach these huge, controversial issues. If we want students to understand what people actually said—not just our narrative about it—we have to draw from primary sources.
The hard part is analyzing which primary sources and where to use them. Of course, there are core documents for each subject area. Lexandria’s courses draw on these. It’s helpful to touch on each of these pieces in excerpts so that students know where you’re getting your information—and so they can follow up if they’re interested in going the extra mile. Some require a deeper dive, like the Declaration of Independence.
Grounding the discussions of American history in the Declaration of Independence is critical. The Declaration of Independence was the formal document that tied us together as a nation, but it was neither a totally novel idea, nor did its signers have any illusions that its principles were being perfectly followed when it was written.
Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration, wrote two letters later in life that help us understand the document’s twin purpose. In 1825, he wrote that the Declaration was intended “Not to find out new principles, or new arguments… it was intended to be an expression of the American mind.” Those principles in the Declaration would, of course, serve an immediate purpose for the American people struggling to establish self-government. But Jefferson also noted the Declaration’s universal application. In 1826, when considering the Declaration’s 50th anniversary, he hoped it would inspire the whole world to eventually “assume the blessings and security of self-government.”
As we can see from the example of the Declaration and Jefferson’s later letters, we have a wealth of information to draw from, illustrating what the principles and purposes of the Declaration are. From the firm foundation of the Declaration, as the first expression of what Americans believe, we can then approach specific issues. Some questions to ask when we read what a later document says can include:
Does this line up with what the Declaration says about human rights?
What does the author believe about the American Founding?
Does the author seem to agree with the ideas of liberty and equality, or disagree?
This is the method Lexandria has used with our content. Our ebook The American Experiment draws heavily from primary sources, and we will always continue to ground our library in the words of the historical figures we talk about. Whatever else you do with American primary sources, remember that across American history, authors of all sorts have had one of three approaches to the Declaration and its principles:
Continuity—Trying to authentically live up to the principles of the American Founding.
Innovation—Applying the principles in new ways, or drawing on the rhetorical pieces of the American Founding for new situations but changing some of the principles.
Rejection—Refusing to believe in the American principles of liberty and equality.
When an author like Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, writes that the United States “rested upon the assumption of the equality of races,” he shows that he has an accurate grasp of what American principles mean. But then he goes on, “This was an error… Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.” We can then see that although he understands the principles of the American Founding, he is in firm rejection of them.
Don’t Deflect—Lean In
Unfortunately for those of us who have to teach the subject, history isn’t always as clear-cut as a comparison of the Declaration of Independence to the Corner Stone Speech. Americans, both the people and their leaders, have often failed to live up the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Whether because they openly rejected them (like Alexander Stephens) or because they conveniently ignored them when they wanted to do so, American history is riddled with crimes against human rights.
We can confront these hard truths in part by refusing to flinch away from them when they come up. A student will, more likely than not, raise issues like slavery or Native American mistreatment in the next year. There are two possible pitfalls for a teacher who fails to confront the problems in American history.
First, some people will dismiss the issues entirely, pretending they don’t exist or aren’t relevant to understanding America’s story today. They might downplay the problems, claiming that they weren’t the norm and therefore don’t need to be treated as anything more than a fluke, a crime that doesn’t reflect on our experiment in self-government. Or they might simply declare that the bad things that happened in the past are “the way things used to be” and fail to expand on what that means. Many students, aware that there are uncomfortable facts about American history, will conclude that the American experiment must be a lie. They will believe it was all fake, all just lofty rhetoric used to sweep atrocities under the rug.
On the other hand, some teachers begin by setting up that narrative for their students. They don’t take the words of past Americans seriously. They might avoid the difficult conversations of American history by refusing to do the hard work of primary source material or putting actions in context. Young people who are handed a narrative on a silver platter end up with no real reason to doubt it unless they do a lot of research on their own—never something we should expect from a student.
So we need to not only use primary sources to demonstrate American principles, but lean into the difficulties that the Founders faced when trying to make those principles work. We can’t ignore the ways they felt that they had to compromise to build a nation that could succeed in the long-term. Even when we only look at the writing of the Constitution, we can see clear political realities. The slave trade could not be banned until 1808: to ensure Southern states would ratify the Constitution. The three-fifths compromise had to be carefully constructed as they tried to acknowledge the personhood of enslaved people without giving Southern states far more representation than they were owed according to their free population. These and more examples demonstrate how early Americans struggled to both found a country that could last and live out their principles of liberty and equality—and in the effort to do so, their mistakes and imperfections caused real harm to people who weren’t able to partake in those principles yet.
Confronting the ways the Founders failed to live up to the principles of the Declaration of Independence does not disrespect them. Rather, it takes them seriously. The practice treats them as real human beings, full of flaws and foibles but also virtues and ideals. In teaching students to do so, we can engage with the full spectrum of American history—heroics and villainy alike.
This year, as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we should reflect on the next 250 years of our nation in the classroom. Should we jettison the whole project because its founders were imperfect? No! We should teach students to appreciate their inheritance of the American experiment.
Self-government is hard. We will never do it perfectly. By showing students how our ancestors grappled with their realities and tried to make a better world, we prepare them to become better citizens, better leaders, better Americans.
