Wishing US a Happy 250th Birthday

July 4, 2026

Imagine the United States two and a half centuries ago. There were far fewer people in this new country, just an estimated 2.5 million in 1776. For comparison, 2.6 million people currently live in Brooklyn. From the close of the Revolutionary War through 1820, immigration was estimated to be 250,000 according to Census records. Those records also tell us that, “There existed, practically speaking, no inspection along the frontiers prior to October 1893; it is ascertained from Canadian sources that from 40,000 to 50,000 Europeans entered the United States who landed at Quebec and Halifax during 12 months preceding that date (Treasury Department, Annual Report of the Superintendent of Immigration, 1894, p. 19).

There were few roads and no cars or trucks, of course. No airports or planes either, and certainly no rocket ships bound for Outer Space. The new country started out as the 13 former Colonies stretched along the East Coast from Maine to Georgia. Philadelphia was the biggest city, by population, at around 33,000. More than twice that number currently live in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan. New York State was only about half its current size in 1776.

The United States of 1776 was remarkably different from the USA of 2026. Any yet, there’s a through-line that connects these distant eras. At a time when kings still ruled over Europe, our country’s Founders explicitly rejected that form of governance. Rather than hereditary monarchies, these men of the Enlightenment designed a new system in which the the People chose who would lead. There was an aspirational goal of Rights that would both limit the power of government and protect the citizens’ liberties. A system of checks and balances was designed such that no tyrant could arise and subjugate the People. Representation was baked into the system with regularly scheduled elections, and a distinct degree of State sovereignty within the Constitution. A few years later, a Bill of Rights was adopted that honored Freedom of Speech and the Press in the very 1st of its 10 Amendments.

Western expansion, a Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Right to Vote’s extension to Women and the 18 year olds were still to come. But even as waves of immigrants arrived on our shores, the unique character of the USA became an inspiration to people around the World that looked to our experiment with something like envy. And that unique character that said, “here, anything is possible” brought some of the hardest working, risk taking-est, and most intelligent people in the World to this country. It was such a thing that other countries lamented the ‘Brain Drain’ that mostly benefited the USA. They came here with a sense that they could flourish in a way they could only dream of in their native land. And so we saw the emergence of something known as ‘the American Dream.’

As we celebrate our amazing country’s 250th Birthday today, we can look forward as well as backward. Yes, we’ve come a long way since the days of Benjamin Franklin’s print shop in Philadelphia, and he’d probably be pretty disoriented by what he’d see if he could somehow reappear today. But we’re not a country with just a past to celebrate. We are, relatively speaking, a young nation. We don’t look back on a continuous existence, even with name changes, of thousands of years like many countries including China and Iran. And like the young generally, the future is filled with potential. As we move forward with this noble experiment called the United States of America, let’s commit to keeping the ideas that our nation was founded upon alive and well:

“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. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The Inwood Gazette: What’s your Birthday Wish for America?

Judy: “That we get back to Democracy and inviting our neighbors in.”