A republic worth building for the next century.

An audacious idea: that a people could govern themselves.

Its authors declared all men created equal while many of them held other people in bondage. The promise was larger than the nation that first made it.

A framework that divides power, and expects to be corrected.

The Constitution was signed in 1787 and the Bill of Rights ratified in 1791. Twenty-seven amendments later, the framework is still open to revision by the people it serves.

A war over slavery, and a new meaning of citizenship.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments abolished slavery, defined birthright citizenship and barred denying the vote on account of race. Within a generation, many of those rights were denied again in practice.

Prosperity built by many hands.

Workers, reformers and organized labor pressed for safer work, fair wages and social insurance. By 1938 the Social Security Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act were federal law, recognizing that liberty depends in part on security.

Citizens marched so that the promise would include them.

From Montgomery to Selma, ordinary people organized, testified and marched. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 followed. The work of securing equal participation did not end there.

The republic is still being built, by citizens, every day.

Trust in institutions, economic security, new technology and a changing world now test the system. These are problems of design and stewardship, and a free people can work on them together.

Seventy-five years is three generations.

A republic where freedoms are secure, institutions are accountable, prosperity is broadly shared and the nation can defend itself and its allies. That is an aspiration, not a prediction.