America at 250: Historian Willmoore Kendall Thinks We Get the Nation’s Birthdate Wrong

What if all 349 million of us are going to be celebrating America’s 250th birthday not merely on the wrong day but in the wrong year?

William F. Buckley Jr.’s teacher and mentor — a senior editor of this magazine during its first eight years — believed 1776 is the wrong national start date. “The Declaration of Independence did not, as Lincoln proclaims, establish our independence as a nation,” Willmoore Kendall wrote in The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition, the book he co-authored with Georgetown political scientist George Carey. “Rather what it did was establish a baker’s dozen of new sovereignties.”

About the Author

Daniel J. Flynn

Daniel J. Flynn, the author of The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer, is an American Spectator senior editor, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and YouTuber @RightWingWilderness.

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America at 250

What if all 349 million of us are going to be celebrating America’s 250th birthday not merely on the wrong day but in the wrong year?

William F. Buckley Jr.’s teacher and mentor — a senior editor of this magazine during its first eight years — believed 1776 is the wrong national start date. “The Declaration of Independence did not, as Lincoln proclaims, establish our independence as a nation,” Willmoore Kendall wrote in The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition, the book he co-authored with Georgetown political scientist George Carey. “Rather what it did was establish a baker’s dozen of new sovereignties.”