This is the Fourth of July address that Carly Fiorina, the VA250 National Honorary Chair, delivered at Fort Monroe:
America was made in Virginia. Wherever you travelled from today, and wherever you are going tomorrow, you are not simply making a journey to Fort Monroe or Williamsburg. You are coming home. As the birthplace of the nation, Virginia belongs to every American.
It doesn’t matter whether you can trace your lineage back to the first Americans or you just became a citizen this morning. It doesn’t matter where or how you started or what you look like. If you believe in the promise of America, in individual liberty and equality before God, then Virginia is where you come from. Because this is where those ideas were born and raised, where the dream of freedom became a nation destined to achieve it.
America:
Welcome Home.
We are so fortunate to be here tonight, on sacred ground, by the Algernourne Oak.
We gather here tonight, together, to remember our past and honor all those who came before us.
We gather here tonight, together, to celebrate the ideas and ideals that have brought us to this time and this community.
And as we listen to our inspiring young Virginians and their powerful tributes to freedom, and raise our right hands and take the Semiquincentennial Pledge, we re-commit ourselves to our role as citizens and the work to form a more perfect union.
Whenever any of our families gather for a special occasion, the same thing always happens. We inevitably begin to tell stories of our families’ past. We do this because we realize at our core that we cannot know ourselves unless we know those who came before us. Until we understand our past, we feel untethered in our present, unmoored and uncertain about our future.
For those of you like me who have had family stories that were hidden because we were ashamed or afraid or indifferent, we all eventually learn that a family cannot heal until everyone’s story is told. What is true for a family, is true for a community. And it is true for our nation.
Throughout all time and across the face of the earth, ours is the only nation not founded on ethnicity or territory or religion. Ours is the only nation in human history founded on ideas, ideals and a system of government. When we do not know our history, when we do not care who or what came before us, when we no longer understand the foundation upon which our nation is built, then we do not know why we are Americans. And our differences tear us apart, because we have no national purpose or identity that holds us together.
We have always been a fractious, restless, and yes, a divided nation. The truth is that a common cause to build a new nation was undertaken by people who did not always like or trust one another. Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry despised each other. George Washington and George Mason went to their dying days never speaking again, despite being neighbors, over a fearsome disagreement about the Bill of Rights.
Deep divisions existed throughout all the colonies: over religion, politics, ethnicity, status and class, slavery. Colonists were divided over whether revolution was heroism or treason.
Can you imagine how the enslaved community must have felt about all the revolutionary fervor and the talk of freedom? 250 years ago this November, Lord Dunmore, the last Royal Governor just up the road in Williamsburg, promised any enslaved man who would fight on the side of the British their eventual freedom. Do you imagine the enslaved community was united about how to respond to this? Of course not. Can you imagine the incalculable risks the enslaved and their families had to weigh as they considered whether to fight for an idea alongside their enslavers or take their chances with the British army? And yet so many did fight for a new nation built on powerful ideas.
The arrival of colonists in tall ships was a harbinger of disaster for indigenous peoples in so many ways. The various tribes, sovereign nations all, were deeply divided over how to engage with the thirteen colonies and how to interpret the budding movement towards independence. Many Chiefs and their representatives found the British more reliable negotiating partners. And yet, despite the divisions and the huge risks, countless forebears of Chief Adkins and all the tribal chiefs gathered here this evening fought for powerful ideas and for a different future. And to this day, despite only earning citizenship in 1924, Native Americans fight in our armed forces at the highest rate per capita of any group of Americans.
The revolutionary movement, like all great movements forward in this country, did not occur because everyone agreed. Great movements forward occur because enough people decide that their common cause is more important than individual differences and disappointments. And this is true of our times and our semiquincentennial movement as well.
The signing of the Declaration of Independence does not mark the beginning of the Revolutionary War, nor its end. It does not mark the beginning or the end of the political process to form a new system of government. Nevertheless, the powerful ideas in the Declaration read by our young Virginians inspired men and women, enslaved and free, native and immigrant. They were wildly radical ideas at the time, and they changed the world forever. And they have inspired every movement for human dignity, equality and liberty from then on, here and in every corner of the earth.
As Americans, we know our nation has failings. We know we do not always live up to our ideals. Still, we are optimistic about our future because we know that what happened here in Virginia bequeaths to us a system of government that allows us to repair our faults.
Citizens are sovereign in our system of government. And so our motivation comes from knowing that we, as citizens, can build upon the efforts of those who came before us and continue to form a more perfect union.
Our inspiration comes from the realization that despite risk, division, fear and doubt, against all odds, countless heroes, whether we know their names or not, chose to do difficult, important things. And we realize, when we see our own reflections in the mirror of our history, that those heroes were not so different from ourselves.
America is still the nation where more things are more possible for more people than anywhere else on earth. Let us pledge to educate ourselves about who and where we come from. Let us pledge to engage with one another so we understand why we are all Americans. And let us pledge that our 250th Birthday and the Semiquincentennial Movement will inspire a season of civic renewal.
It doesn’t matter what you look like. It doesn’t matter where you come from. It doesn’t matter how you started or how you pronounce your last name.
If you believe in the promise of America…
If you believe in equality before God…
If you believe in self-evident truths and unalienable rights. If you believe in the freedom of each of us to dream and then live to make those dreams come true…
If you believe in these American ideals, then E Pluribus Unum, Out of Many One, is still possible in this great nation.
A globally respected leader in business and civic life, Carly Fiorina was the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company as Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard. A self-made executive who began her career as a secretary, she has since become a prominent voice on innovation, leadership, and purpose-driven impact. As Founder and Chairman of Unlocking Potential, she empowers organizations and individuals to lead with integrity, unlock potential in others, and drive real change. To bring Carly Fiorina’s insight and inspiration to your next event, contact WWSG.
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