INDIANAPOLIS — Hoosiers have waded across flooded plains for invasion, died preserving brigade flags and parachuted into flak-pelted skies to create, define and defend our noble experiment in governance.
This week, Americans are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, which ignited our revolution in 1776 with the universal claim that “all men are created equal.” Eleven years later, the preamble to the U.S. Constitution was adopted, beginning with “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union ...”
Beginning in 1776, every 80 years, cataclysmic events have altered the arc of history and justice as we have continually refined ourselves into this more perfect union, even with all our imperfections.
Fourscore after the Revolution came the Civil War, which hinged on the July 1-3 Battle of Gettysburg. Eighty years later came World War II, whose lynchpin was the 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy. In 2026, some fear America is slipping into an autocracy while trashing alliances and maritime law that had been in place for the past eight decades.
When I think of the gravity of the Fourth of July, it begins with men from the territory that became Indiana who secured and preserved our independence.
In 1777, it was George Rogers Clark who attained financial support from Virginia Gov. Patrick Henry, raised an army from Kentucky and the Indiana Territory and captured the British Fort Sackville at Vincennes, essentially doubling the size of what would become the United States. It created what would become the Northwest Territory. In doing so, Clark and his men murdered several native people in front of the fort, convincing the British to surrender.
In early July 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg began. In his book “Iron Men, Iron Will: The Nineteenth Indiana Regiment of the Iron Brigade,” former Howard County Republican Party chair Craig L. Dunn chronicles the Hoosiers who fought from Seminary Ridge to McPherson’s Woods.
An artilleryman from Battery B described the battle from behind the breastworks: “Up and down the line, men reeling and falling, splinters flying from wheels and axles where bullets hit; in the rear horses tearing and plunging mad with wounds or terror. ... Smoke, dust, splinters, blood, wreck and carnage indescribable.”
A colonel declared, “Boys, we must hold our colors on this line or lie here under them.” As the regiment’s banner came under attack and fell onto the battlefield, a succession of Hoosier soldiers — Cpl. Cunningham, Abe Buckles, Lt. Macy, Sgt. Blair, David Phipps, Lt. Crocket East and Joel Curtis — attempted to rescue the flag, many of them dying.
Dunn adds, “The few days around Independence Day, 1863, proved to be an exultant time for the war-weary people of the North as they celebrated Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg … but the men of the 19th Indiana were too shot up and tired to celebrate.” Of the regiment’s 288 soldiers, only 78 reported for duty on July 4, with 27 killed, 133 wounded and 50 missing in action. The bullet-ridden regiment banner was sent home to Indiana draped over the body of brave Sgt. Maj. Asa Blanchard.
Eight decades later came D-Day, on June 6, 1944. Pvt. Hubert McClain, of Montgomery County, served in the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Many in his unit overshot their drop zone, landing in nearby marshes and rivers, some drowning.
According to an American Legion historical account, in the early morning light, small groups of soldiers with cricket clickers — McClain among them — could see the steeple of the Graignes Catholic church and moved toward it “as if drawn by a magnet.” By nightfall, some 182 soldiers manned the village perimeter after these French villagers voted to support them. On June 8, the livid Nazi 17th SS Panzer Division arrived, interrogating villagers, the mayor and priests. The Nazis took the wounded American troops, the medics and the doctor to the edge of the swamp and executed them, McClain likely among them. It had to be a terrifying final chapter of his young life.
Those sacrifices over the past 250 years have paved the way for Hoosiers to excel in more peaceful pursuits: entrepreneurs Eli Lilly, Madam C.J. Walker and Tony Hulman; Nobel laureates Herbert C. Brown and Ei-ichi Negishi of Purdue and Philip H. Dybvig, Elinor Ostrom, Riccardo Giacconi and Salvador Edward Luria of Indiana University; humanitarians Notre Dame’s Father Theodore Hesburgh and Eva Kor; musicians Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, Michael Jackson and John Mellencamp; athletes Bill Garrett and Larry Bird.
Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, approved by a committee of five and then the Second Continental Congress, is best known for its opening: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
A key phrase is this: “instituted by men.”
Historian Jon Meacham observed that the Declaration, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights were part of an “unfolding drama” that began with the Magna Carta and was emboldened by Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press. Vertical power was refashioned horizontally, emphasizing the rights of newly created “citizens.”
Meacham noted that “imperfect men” created a course to attain this “more perfect union.” Women were given the right to vote only a century ago. It wasn’t until 1964 and 1965 that “multi-racial democracy began” with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. We’ve been a true democracy for all men and women for 60 years.
Today, American governance is at a crossroads. With the U.S. Supreme Court’s forging, out of whole cloth, a unitary chief executive — with more power for the president than at any time since the Watergate scandal, or perhaps ever — we stand at another 80-year tipping point.
Jefferson’s third and fourth sentences in the Declaration acknowledge that establishing and maintaining what the Constitution would later call a “more perfect union” would be difficult: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Brian A. Howey is an opinion columnist for State Affairs Indiana and the founder of Howey Politics Indiana. His writing offers analysis and opinion shaped by decades of experience covering Indiana politics. Email him at howey@stateaffairs.com.
