By John F. Di Leo –
On February 12, 1733, James Oglethorpe disembarked from the Anna, a ship full of British settlers, at a site near present-day Savannah, officially founding the settlement that became the Georgia colony.
Georgia was the 13th colony to be established, of the group that became the United States of America, 43 years later.
Just like its neighbors, Georgia was built by British settlers who were to spend the following generations building farms and ranches, towns and cities, churches and businesses.
Georgia was to see the spread of civilization, from the Atlantic coast inland, and produce many of America’s great talents – from ballplayer Ty Cobb to businessman Herman Cain, from songwriter Johnny Mercer to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Georgia is not alone… The same story can be told of all of our fifty states. Every state in the Union is the story of the spread of civilization, the story of settlement and growth, the movement from poverty to prosperity through that very special combination of capitalist economics and the freedom philosophy that our Founding Fathers spread across the land as it grew.
There were certainly challenges and growing pains, as our young nation tried to apply our political system to solve our problems. Federalist policies efforts to deal fairly with the Indians were thwarted at every turn by bigoted Democrats… Federalist and Whig Party efforts to put an end to slavery were thwarted, too, by the Democratic Party, resulting in our only formal civil war.
The march of history has never been perfect, anywhere on earth, but here in the USA, it has at least progressed further and more happily than in most.
Every state has days like today to celebrate with pride. Just as Georgia has the day of James Oglethorpe‘s landing to cheer, so too does Massachusetts have the landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620… Illinois has the arrival of French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet in 1673… New York celebrates Giovanni da Verrazzano’s arrival, way back in 1524.
The story of the United States is the story of human civilization itself: courageous travelers and settlers, explorers and builders, farmers and teachers, statesmen and writers… each seeking the right place for their families and their descendants to settle, each seeking a place to build a church, to grow a community, to perfect the culture that they brought with them from the old country.
For the concept of Western Civilization, as important and wonderful an achievement as it already was in the Old World, was in many ways still just “potential” when it was brought to America. But here in the New World, the achievements of Western Civilization could develop and spread, to be shared with everyone.
Western Civilization spent millennia recognizing and defining human rights… But not until it came to America was a nation founded on the idea that government itself exists to protect those inalienable God-given rights.
Western Civilization spent millennia developing the arts – music, theatre, architecture, painting, sculpture, literature – but only the United States provided such a thriving economy that the majority of people could really enjoy these arts, rather than seeing them limited to the select few lucky enough to be born into nobility.
And Western Civilization developed theories and processes for concepts that made business able to thrive, from banking to marine insurance, from trade guilds to commercial centers… but only when the United States, under the expert tutelage of the visionary designers George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, built a legal and economic system with the private sector as its focus, were the opportunities of the business world truly available, to be harnessed by the multitudes, rather than just the few.
When states and communities across the country honor the dates of their founding, this is really what we are celebrating. It’s easy to think of these “founding days” and “settlement anniversaries” as meaningless dates to remember, or as minor holidays to justify a little local parade or a governor’s rote proclamation. But these anniversaries really should mean so much more to us than that. They truly deserve the celebration merited by hundreds of years of achievement.
Every state in the union, to varying degrees, and in various ways, is a success story.
We all began with the arrival of brave individuals, who dared the untamed wilds of ocean, forest, river, swamp, desert, plain and mountain range… all in collaboration with fellow heroes, risking their lives for one great purpose: to bring Western Civilization, the Judeo-Christian tradition, and what we like to call the Protestant work ethic, to the New World… to build this shining City on the Hill that we lovingly know as our United States of America.
Copyright 2020 John F Di Leo
John F Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer, writer and actor. His ancestors, too, crossed the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the New World, from farms in Ireland, Scotland, Austria and Germany, and from a little fishing village in Calabria.
Don’t miss an article! Use the free tool in the margin to sign up for Illinois Review’s free email notification service, so you always know when we publish new content!
