If you had to think of one document other than the Bible that people can most easily quote almost without thinking about it, that one document would be the Declaration of Independence. The comparison to the Bible is apt. Not that the Declaration of Independence is holy in a religious sense of the word. But it has a place of reverence in the hearts of the American people and in the history of the founding of this great nation.

While not the first words of the Declaration of Independence, these stirring words have that kind of prophetic power that anyone who hears them in immediately inspired by the beauty, the poetry and the deep truths that were so beautifully expressed in that historic document.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Americans have a unique vision of themselves and their role in the world. Unlike perhaps any other peoples in history, Americans see themselves as people of destiny and a people who were put here to do something phenomenal and something significant for history and for all peoples of the earth. This unique self-concept, sometimes perceived as arrogance, is deeply grounded in a set of archetypes that Americans use to form their vision of themselves in the world. And no other archetype is as powerful in the American psyche than that of the cowboy.

The actual American cowboy was indeed a unique individual. While probably not as noble and ruggedly handsome as the images created of him in the movies, they were unique types of men who carved out a civilization from the rugged wilderness that was the American west in the years before the turn of the last century.

Some of the reasons that the image of the cowboy sometimes includes elements of the outlaw and the loner is that much of the legend of the cowboy came from stories of refugees from the broken southern army who took to the life of the cowboy rather than attempt to integrate into a society that included making peace with “the Yankee”. And that type of individual certainly did account for many of the outlaws who went on to become the stuff of legend and stories even to this day.

In the life of this great nation, a few of its presidents have emerged from the pack as truly historic and memorable even more than others. Of course, the presidents from the generation of the founding fathers certainly fit that bill including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. And presidents that served the country in times of great crisis also are deeply honored in memory. But in recent memory, there probably no other president that brings up emotions of respect and admiration as much as that of John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy seemed to capture the hearts of the American people in a way that was unique in presidents before or since. Part of it may have been the era in history that the country was in when he became the President of the United States. The historic time between 1950 and 1970 was a time when the largest generation of youth, now known as the “baby boomers”, was coming of age. With them a new youth movement brought a sense of optimism, a “can do” attitude and to some extent a sense of revolution. They were looking for new ways of seeing things, a new vision of the future and new leadership and John F. Kennedy was the perfect man of the hour to provide that leadership.

Thomas Jefferson is one of those almost mythic figures from early American history that stand tall as one of the great heroes of the revolution and the early definition of what this country was going to become. Sometimes it’s easy to look at a figure that stands so tall in history and think, perhaps some of that is myth. But when you look at the history of the times, he was every bit as great as our adoration of him suggests he was.

Thomas Jefferson’s service to the new American union lasted over fifty years. He not only contributed to the core philosophical underpinnings upon which our democracy I based, he served in a variety of offices and made some phenomenal contributions to the developing country including…

* 1775 - Served in the Continental Congress
* 1776 – Wrote the Declaration of Independence
* 1779-1781 - Governor of Virginia
* 1783 – Elected to Congress
* 1784-1789 – Commissioner and minister to France
* 1790-1793 – America’s first Secretary of State under George Washington
* 1797-1801 – Served as Vice President of the United States
* 1801-1809 – Third President of the United States
* 1803 – Approved of and helped launch the Lewis and Clark Expedition
* 1803 – Purchased the Louisiana Territory for the United States
* 1815 – Launched the Library of Congress
* 1825 – founded the University of Virginia

If you thought back to the first things you ever learned about the history of America, the one that jumps out is that Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America is 1492. While the date is correct, we later learned when our study of history became more scholarly that there is some dispute about whether Columbus discovered America at all. So what is the real legacy that this legend of Columbus has given to the American culture that has made him such a revered figure in cultural history?

So much of the Columbus story is approximate that, at first review, we would almost relegate the story of how Columbus discovered America to the level of a myth that borders on superhero worship. But Columbus was not a myth. There really was an explorer named Columbus who carried out three bold journeys across the ocean and during those journeys, he did indeed discover “the new world.” His ships really were named the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria and he did indeed embark one of those three voyages in 1492.

The legacy of Columbus then is more than just the facts of his exploratory journeys and their outcome. There is reason to believe that Columbus’s fabled “discovery of America” did not occur on North American soil but somewhat further south of here, somewhere in the Bahamas. But the legacy of Columbus lies in his spirit and the challenge he took on that is part of the American spirit and one we identify with so strongly.

Sometimes when a country is just getting organized, its citizens are considered to be uneducated, out of touch or primitive. But exactly opposite was the truth when the great American experiment began to take shape. The world did not see America as provincial or simple and that is due to a large part to the work of the man many that many have called “The First American”. That man was Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin stands out amongst those we would call “The Founding Fathers” because he was neither a military man nor a politician. He was one of the few we think of a one of our nation’s fathers that never served as president. But that does not mean that his contributions to the start of this great country were not profound and far reaching.

Benjamin Franklin could easily be described as what was popularly known in his day as a “renaissance man”. He was truly proficient in many fields of discipline and he had a mind that was fascinated with all areas of study and knowledge. As such he brought to the discussions with his fellow founding fathers a knowledge of political theory, an awareness of history and an ability to speculate on the perfect union that was crucial to the laying the conceptual foundation of what America would come to be when it blossomed into reality.

We would like to think all of our presidents of the United States were truly great men and to be sure, just handling the awesome responsibility of the presidency takes a special kind of individual. One of the unique and great things about the system of government in America is the concept of citizen leadership. This is the idea of an ordinary citizen rising up and becoming president for a while and then returning to private life.

But of the handful of men who have held that office, a few have stood out for their great achievements and leadership in a time that changed the country for ever. And one of these truly great presidents was Abraham Lincoln. Probably more than any other president, Lincoln had to handle an internal civil war that was far more than shouting and name calling. This was a dispute that could have torn the country in half and starting a rupturing that could have resulted in dozens of small weak independent states instead of the powerful nation we know as America today.

Quilts have been a an expression of American women over the past hundred years. Quilts are being reappraised by historians, art critics and a growing public as a form and expression of American folk art. The creativity of generations of American women is gaining recognition for their quilts.

Quilts are no longer stored in closets and trunks. Happily quilts are finding their way back into our lives and homes. Many quilts can also be found on the walls of galleries and museums in the world. Quilts have come to be a remarkable design tradition which has developed in the United States, since colonial times.

By the mid-eighteenth century there were three distinct English needlework styles used in quilts which had found their way to America. First there was the appliqué covers, pieced patchwork (stitched shapes) and quilted whole cloth coverings.

America has always been a pluralistic society, broken into small groups with symbolic boundaries separating different sects. Positively, the pluralistic society allowed certain immigrant groups to remain affectionate and loyal to their ancestral religions and cultures, and also to actively participate in American political life. A civic culture developed in America, under the guidelines of republicanism:

“Government through elected officials, the eligibility of all citizens to participate in public life, and the freedom to differ in religious and individual life “(Miljkovic-Gacic & Ferrell, 129-133)

European immigrants could become members of the polity on a basis of equal rights with native born citizens regardless of the country they came from or the religion they believed in. While European immigrants were enveloped in the American myth, and all this vast land had to offer, two other groups: blacks and Native Americans were not allowed the same opportunities. The myth did not apply to Native Americans (Indians). Indians were not encouraged to remain in touch with their cultural and religious roots the way other groups were. The American government did not want the heathens to continue with their uncivilized lifestyle.

Consequently, several programs were developed to help the Indians assimilate to the American way of life. Once the Indians were pushed onto the least fertile land in the country, tribes were divided up and individuals were given their own plots of land in order to become self-sufficient. Indian children were taken away from their parents to be educated about the civilized life and the white man’s' laws. This separation was another attempt, by the white man, to discourage the continuation of the heathen traditions. Unlike the European immigrants, the majority of the Native Americans did not care to assimilate, nor did they wish to participate in the American government. The Indians just wanted to continue with the tribal pluralism that they practiced in the time before the white man's arrival. The Native Americans wished to remain self-governing, independent nations.

As tragic as the story of Native Americans is, there is another story: that of African Americans (blacks), that some would consider even more tragic. While Indians were constantly being encouraged to assimilate against their will, black: who often believed in American ideals, were forced to live in a segregated society. Blacks were never believed to be equals of the white man. From the time the first twenty blacks were brought to the United States as indentured servants in the 1600's; until the 1970's, blacks were considered to be inferior to whites (some would argue that this belief still prevails). Many believed, as did our great leader: Thomas Jefferson that blacks were intellectually, spiritually, and physically inferior to whites. Accordingly, the majority of our nation's history is plagued with pluralism caste.

This pluralism has been accompanied by all the aspects of a caste system: social indignity, physical brutality, educational deprivation, and political exclusion. Unlike the Indians, however, the torment and exclusion of blacks only strengthened their belief in the ideals of the Constitution and the American myth. African-Americans and Native Americans were all affected by laws passed between 1865 and 1900. Some, like the child labor laws, were beneficial to these groups, but mostly the laws were unfair and unbeneficial. Whether they were federal, state, or local laws, they all had a big impact on the lives of these people.

Works Cited
Miljkovic-Gacic I, Ferrell RE, Patrick AL. Estimates of African, European and Native American ancestry in Afro-Caribbean men on the island of Tobago. ISSN: 0001-5652, 2005; Vol. 60 (3), pp. 129-33

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