“There is more power in unity than in division.”
America has always had division, but it has always possessed a certain amount of unity. And it is this unity surrounding specific events that has enabled America to become the nation it is today. However, what we have chose to unify around is not always positive; many times the unity of the majority has ill affects on the minority. Nevertheless, that unity brought America something - a reinforcement of founding principles, a belief in a stronger central government (both to restrict and to preserve freedoms), an expansion of territory, or a belief in individualism and individual rights.
The key is that our unity in each of these events has shaped who were are today. Some of them are examples we are still proud of, while others serve as cautionary lessons.
Beginning with the Revolutionary War, American colonists unite around what we have long since considered an American tradition, the concerns surrounding a strong central authority. Though it took many years, the American colonists united enough around the political philosophies of the Enlightenment (rights, liberty, freedom), to break from Great Britain and form our own nation. We then established our own national government under the Articles of Confederation to demonstrate our belief in local authority and individual liberty. (We will come full circle with this uniting characteristic at the end.)
However, we then found it necessary to create a stronger central government under the U.S. Constitution. It is through this shift to a stronger national government in the early 1800s that we then begin to couple our belief in Manifest Destiny with that of the strong national government. Americans believed that individually, and as a people, we were destined to expand westward, and we expected the central government to support this - going to war with Mexico, pushing the Native Americans out, building the railroads. America’s strength as a nation depended on all of these. And though there was divisiveness in the debates over the extension of slavery and political power, we still accomplished Westward Expansion, solidifying a clearly “American”people (ancestors of old immigrants from NW Europe).
The Civil War and Reconstruction Era was certainly divisive, but remember Abraham Lincoln’s primary goal during the war - preserving the Union. Unity of our nation even carried over into the plans of, and then battles over, Reconstruction. What were the goals to reunite the Union? How would the nation be reconstructed. And what ultimately happened was the recognition that the divisiveness need to end and America need to move on with its guiding principles we had been united around since the beginning- strength through expansion westward and beyond. We would not only close the frontier, we would look abroad.
During the Spanish-Am. War era America united around the belief that we were destined to expand beyond our borders and make a place for ourselves in the world. Though a controversial war when looking at its causes, Americans, through yellow journalism and our nationalistic (racial, religious, and economic) fervor, supported our expansion. This unity strengthened our national government to act as it did, and allowed our nation, in the process, to gain strength and status in the world.
We are uniting as a nation around certain beliefs - nationalism and a sense of greatness connected with destiny. These events and our their outcomes obviously are not beneficial to certain groups of people - Native Americans, African Americans, or foreigners. Many times our decisions have a singular, and not a universal, goal.
Having established ourselves in the world through the successes of the Spanish-American War and then our involvement in WWI, American unity doubled down on reaffirming some of the American principles we had fought to preserve through the events previously mentioned - belief in a strong national government and “being American”.
During WWI we willing accept “making the world safe for democracy”(our way), using the government to limit free speech during the war, and then in the 1920s, returning to a decade when the national government extends power over the people through the first Red Scare, the restrictive and racially and ethnically insensitive Immigration Policies, and the passage of Prohibition. However, at the same time American’s were expressing through the Roaring ‘20s, the unity we shared as a nation living it up in country made materially prosperous from all of our previous successes. The title itself, the Roaring ‘20s, indicates a nation seeing itself as united in its beliefs.
After the collapse of the economic system which brings on the Great Depression, America begins to unite even more in its growing belief that a strong national government is there to protect American’s economic well-being. FDR, through his New Deal programs, attempts to ease the financial woes of the nation. Though it is greatly debated whether or not these programs accomplished what they were set up to do, the fact that most American’s accepted the effort has unified us still to this day tot believe that a stronger national government must be involved somehow in our economic lives.
After WWII America embarked on a new struggle, one that would reshape our unified approach to Manifest Destiny and another that would reinforce our belief in a strong national government.
The spread of communism forced American’s unite around preventing it from infiltrating other countries and then, ultimately, infiltrating America.
The support for the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, the Berlin Airlift, our defense of South Korea, and then our defense of South Vietnam show an America unified against a common enemy. It was Manifest Destiny without us acquiring land. It was our new way for taking “our way of life”to those places. And the Cold War also showed our unity in how we accepted the strength of the national government - Loyalty Oaths, the Second Red Scare (McCarthyism), the massive government funding of the Space Program and the Arms Race.
And the last event is the Civil Rights Movement. There could not be a more divisive time period in American history, but within these years there are tremendous displays of unity - people uniting around the belief in individual freedoms (full circle from the revolutionary era) to the further unifying belief in a strong national government to preserve those freedoms. African Americans, so often harmed by previous examples of American unity (Manifest Destiny, “Americanization”) now have an opportunity to display strength. And that strength came through the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., focusing on America’s promised freedoms and the struggles to obtain them. But the Civil Rights Movement also showed that society was continuing to support a national government willing to guarantee the rights of all Americans - Brown v. Board, Little Rock Nine, Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to name a few.
So Unity is an American Characteristic. It may not have always been pretty. It may not have always benefitted every American. But whether we view each of these events today with a sense of pride or shame, they all have contributed to the growing, and changing, nature of American Unity.