The Rotunda Tells America’s Story. It’s Time to Tell More of It

T his past weekend, something changed inside the Rotunda of the National Archives in our nation’s capital.

Since 1952, visitors have entered that space to view the nation’s founding documents known as the Charters of Freedom — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. They remain there, as they always should. And now, alongside them, visitors will also encounter two additional milestones in the American story: the Emancipation Proclamation and the 19th Amendment.

This was not simply a curatorial decision. It was a judgment about how we understand ourselves as a nation.

The Rotunda is more than an exhibition space. It is a civic statement. Each year, more than 1 million visitors, such as students on their first trip to Washington and families tracing their genealogy, pass through its doors. For many, it will be their only direct encounter with the nation’s founding documents. The Rotunda functions, in effect, as a national civics classroom. What appears there signals not just what we preserve, but what we teach our citizens to revere.

For decades, the Rotunda told a powerful but incomplete story. The founding documents articulate the principles of the United States, and our shared belief in the primacy of natural rights, constitutional government, and the rule of law. They are the bedrock of the American system of government. Standalone principles, however, do not tell the whole story. They must be applied, contested, and, at times, defended in ways that bring the nation closer to its stated ideals.

The inclusion of the Emancipation Proclamation reflects one of those defining moments. Issued by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, it was both a military measure and a moral turning point. Grounded in the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief, it represented a decisive use of federal power in the service of liberty. It did not, by itself, end slavery. But it was the starting point to move toward equality in the United States. It marked the moment when the federal government acted with clarity of purpose to align the country’s trajectory with the principle, contained in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal. The Emancipation Proclamation also contains Lincoln’s signature. The addition of that document in the Rotunda enables the material inclusion of Lincoln in our American story, something I think is critically important as a political scientist who studies and teaches about the long arc of our history.

The 19th Amendment represents a different but also critically important form of constitutional development. The Constitution begins with “We the People,” yet for much of American history, that phrase excluded women from full political participation. The ratification of the 19th Amendment, through the very amendment process the Founders designed, did not rewrite the nation’s principles; it helped to fulfill them. It reflected decades of civic effort: persuasion, organizing, and persistence by women who insisted that the promises of the Declaration applied to them as well. The 19th Amendment is the largest single enfranchisement in American history, a noteworthy inflection in our development as a republic.

Together, these additions tell a broader truth about the United States. The American experiment was not completed in 1776 or 1787. It established a durable and resilient framework, but one that requires continual effort to live up to its own claims. To present only the founding documents is to tell the story of a nation’s birth with high ideals. To include the Emancipation Proclamation and the 19th Amendment is to tell a story of how these ideals were realized.

The addition of these two documents is not a revision of the American story. It is a more accurate accounting of it. It’s also not a partisan or ideological issue. In fact, it should unify us as Americans during our 250th anniversary. When I served as archivist of the United States, I spoke with over 100 members of Congress and senators, representative of the spectrum of political beliefs, and the response was universal support for their inclusion.

There is a temptation to treat history as either fixed and untouchable or endlessly malleable. Both approaches miss the mark. The strength of the American system lies in its combination of continuity and adaptation. The founding principles endure, but their application has been contested and expanded over time through the exercise of lawful authority, through amendment, and through civic participation.

The Rotunda now reflects that dynamic. It preserves the centrality and honor of the Founding while acknowledging the critical moments when the nation took hard-won steps to bring its practices into closer alignment with its ideals. It presents the American story not as a single moment, but as an ongoing effort.

For visitors, this matters. The Rotunda is often the first place where Americans encounter their civic inheritance in a tangible way. It should inspire reverence for the Founding and foster an understanding of the responsibility that comes with it. As I said in my speech after I publicly took the oath of office as archivist, the founding documents remind us that self-government is not self-executing. It requires participation, rationality, judgment, and, at times, the courage to act in defense of principle.

By placing the Emancipation Proclamation and the 19th Amendment alongside the founding documents, the Rotunda tells a clearer and more complete story about all of us: not only who we declared ourselves to be, but how we have struggled to become a more perfect union. The lesson for visitors is unmistakable. What we inherit is not assured. It endures only if each generation of Americans is willing to sustain it.