We’ve come a long way, though, from Berlin’s World War I-era song that asks for God’s blessings on America and invokes the geographic majesty of our vast nation, “from the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam.” He name-checked the United States only in a list of other countries in the Western Hemisphere, and only toward the end, lest anyone get the idea that there’s something special about this place. An anonymous writer in the Virginia Gazette in March 1776 referred to “the united states of America,” and Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence said it was a statement of “the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” (subsequently changed to “the thirteen united States of America”).
Author: Rich Lowry
Published at: 2026-02-10 23:36:05
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