EDITOR’S NOTE: The State Archives of North Carolina will host a free public discussion among four distinguished UNC-Chapel Hill historians on teaching the Foundations of American Democracy from 5:30-7 pm on Wednesday, Oct. 1 at 109 E. Jones Street in Raleigh. For more details and to register, click here.

By W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Kathleen DuVal, Joseph T. Glatthaar, and Miguel La Serna

RALEIGH (September 24, 2025) – As America prepares for its 250th anniversary, there has never been a more important moment to reflect on our collective past, celebrate our triumphs, and learn from our mistakes. Our polarized political landscape, vitriolic rhetoric, and the unsettling rise of political violence make it tempting to believe there is more that divides us than unites us. 

And yet, we historians know that the United States of America has been through challenging times before. We’ve been through the Revolution, World Wars, and the Great Depression; through the pain of the Civil War and the hard-won progress of the Civil Rights Movement. The intense debates that define American life never go away, and they have their roots in our founding ideals and the very structure of our government.

Our students need that deep context to fulfill their role as citizens, and to feel that they have a stake in the future of the country we share. When History faculty across the UNC System learned last year that all public university undergraduates would be required to take a course covering specific documents in the Foundations of American Democracy, reactions were mixed. Many agreed that a better understanding of the origins of the Republic is critical to civic discourse today. Many also felt that faculty, as experts in the field, should be the ones to determine what to cover in the classroom. 

Regardless of one’s view about the Foundations requirement, there was broad consensus that History faculty, along with our colleagues in Political Science, Public Policy, American Studies, and other traditional Social Sciences and Humanities disciplines, are well-suited to tackle the foundations of democracy for a rising generation of North Carolina students.

It was in that spirit that the History Department at UNC Chapel Hill hatched the idea for a new book, Foundations of American Democracy: A Critical Documents Reader. With contributions from 11 historians covering 21 critical documents from our nation’s past—from the 1776 Declaration of Independence and Constitution of North Carolina to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail nearly 200 years later, Foundations of American Democracy takes readers on a documentary journey through America’s democratic experiment, now 250 years in the making. In addition to collating the required Foundations texts and additional key documents, each chapter provides an image, discussion questions, suggested readings, and a historical introduction written by a Carolina historian. 

The result is a sweeping and accessible volume that allows the historical record to speak for itself while offering important resources to help students contextualize it. Together, the documents collected in this UNC volume show how – whatever our differences – those of us committed to the principles of democratic republicanism have adapted to social, cultural, and political changes to preserve the goal, as Abraham Lincoln so eloquently defined it, “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” 

Understanding this foundational history can help us answer essential questions about governance and democracy today. It can help us learn how to exercise our rights and responsibilities in a more civil, more peaceful, and hopefully more constructive way. That’s important for the more than 200,000 students who will experience “Foundations of American Democracy” coursework over the next four years. But we can all benefit from learning the lessons of history that, taken seriously and honestly and always with a mind toward forming a “more perfect Union,” can help guide our democracy for the next 250 years.