The vision of American unity has woven through the nation’s story since its founding – appearing in the Declaration’s promise that “All men are created equal,” the Constitution’s opening “We the people,” and the Pledge’s commitment to remain “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
This aspiration lives in the country’s very name – the UNITED States – and appears on currency through the Latin phrase E Pluribus Unum, meaning “out of many, one.”
Yet this pursuit has proven both inspiring and elusive, achieving remarkable progress while falling short of its promises, remaining a cherished American principle even as citizens past and present have found it difficult to live up to.
What has happened to the concept of American unity across more than two centuries? What significance does it hold today, especially during divisive times? As one expert puts it, “It’s a question that every society has to answer.”
From the nation’s birth, the founders recognized that unity would be essential for their new experiment, where authority would flow not from kings and monarchs as in Europe but rather, as the Declaration states, from “the consent of the governed.”
“It is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it … indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest,” George Washington declared while leaving the presidency after two terms.
During those early years, as the nation formed from 13 separate colonies, the meaning of unity remained far from clear.
While the founders proclaimed lofty principles, they simultaneously restricted participation, determining who possessed rights and freedom and who did not. Centuries later, understanding unity’s true meaning continues to challenge Americans. Should that Latin motto represent a fusion of diverse viewpoints creating something greater than individual parts, or does it demand conformity – that unity requires sameness?
Regardless of interpretation, aspirations require more than good intentions to become reality – much like New Year’s resolutions that fade without dedication and sustained effort.
Just as personal lives consist of daily moments between major milestones, a nation’s character develops through everyday experiences, not singular events alone.
While unity has remained among America’s core ideals, the lived experience across 2½ centuries has revealed that this constructed nation never contained just ONE America where everyone enjoyed identical circumstances or equal access to power and wealth.
Such equality did not exist at the country’s founding, and it certainly does not exist today.
“I think the United State has had a more volatile history in terms of how it deals with questions of inclusion and exclusion, how it draws the line and polices the line of who’s in and who’s out,” says Daniel Immerwahr, a professor of history at Northwestern University.
“It’s a question that every society has to answer … who’s on the inside, who’s on the outside,” he explains. “I would say that what’s interesting about the United States in this regard is how changeable and nonobvious some of the answers to those questions are.”
Sometimes these divisions have been straightforward – geographic differences between rural and urban areas, plains versus mountains, or climate variations from heat to snow, wildfires to flooding. Other divisions have been cultural – people from different ancestral countries, newcomers versus multi-generational families, various languages, different Christian denominations or entirely different faiths. Economic disparities have always created different living experiences for rich and poor.
However, some differences have constituted genuine tragedies – enslaved Africans and their American-born children, forced to labor under brutal conditions for white owners’ benefit. Even after slavery ended, they faced discrimination and violence under legally sanctioned racism that persisted into the 20th century and continues to resonate today.
Indigenous tribes saw their populations devastated by death and disease as American expansion moved westward and settlers coveted tribal lands. Their cultures were systematically destroyed across generations as the government attempted to force “unity” through harsh assimilation policies.
Various communities have been excluded from opportunities based on gender, sexual orientation, or other characteristics.
Yet persistent movements across different eras have worked to extend opportunities – voting rights, economic advancement, educational access – from some Americans to all. This progress came gradually through protest movements, legal challenges, and appeals to those same founding ideals of unity and equality.
“It provided a language for the groups that were challenging these exclusions to draw on … invoking the ideals of the Revolution and the Declaration and saying, ‘Look, this is what the nation is supposed to be about,’” says Eileen Cheng, a professor of history at Sarah Lawrence College. “They could challenge the system and yet claim that they were being the true Americans.”
However, ideals can remain somewhat abstract concepts.
What does national unity actually mean? Must unity equal uniformity? Using satirist Terry Pratchett’s reference, should people be on the same side, or can they be on “different sides that happen to be side by side”? Is unity even beneficial within a vibrant democracy?
Looking globally and historically reveals no single answer. Some countries have designated official languages while others recognize multiple languages, and some, like the United States, have never officially chosen any. Nations have sometimes established official religions. Different countries maintain varying standards and procedures for granting citizenship to newcomers.
“There are always tensions between the unity and the separateness,” said Paul Wachtel, a psychology professor at the City College of New York. “There’s no society that is just one or just the other … what’s really most essential is that we learn how to negotiate those tensions.”
America confronted this challenge early on. Today’s Constitution represents the second attempt at governmental structure. The first framework, the Articles of Confederation, maintained weaker federal authority while strengthening individual states. This arrangement quickly proved inadequate for the new nation – demonstrating that insufficient unity was ineffective – leading to the Constitution’s creation.
Many European nations have navigated these negotiations within the context of centuries-old histories, established geographic boundaries, and existing governmental systems that influenced their chosen directions. From the founders’ viewpoint, the United States represented something entirely new.
“What it is to be of the United States is to adhere to a set of principles rather than to have a certain kind of lineage,” Immerwahr explains. “Sometimes that makes the United States remarkably open, and then sometimes that gets the leaders of the United States in all kinds of weird contradictions as they try to explain why they’re doing some forms of inclusion and not others.”
America’s track record in managing these tensions shows decidedly mixed results, with conditions shifting over time.
Consider immigration patterns. Some periods have witnessed seemingly endless streams of newcomers arriving on American shores, while other eras have seen much of the world excluded. In politics, the idea of different factions represented by competing parties was initially despised by some, even as it became fundamental to political culture. Groups once marginalized have later gained acceptance, and sometimes the reverse has occurred.
“What have we learned over the last 250 years is that things change,” says Cindy Kam, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. “We are inclined to be social animals, but what those groups are is culturally constructed. So political elites, social elites, cultural elites, they do that work in identifying what the groups are, who is part of ‘us’ and who is a part of the ‘other.’”
These questions remain far from resolved. Recent decades’ demographic, technological, and economic transformations have made unity discussions more pressing than ever. Americans currently live amid widespread polarization, facing serious – sometimes alarming – questions about the nation’s future. This situation may actually resemble the country’s early years more than people recognize.
“This polarization, people talk about it like it’s a new thing. But I think it’s really a return back to the way that we were at the beginning of the country,” Cheng observes. “It’s not like this kind of linear development where we’re growing more and more accepting of difference. I think it’s up and down.”
