Strength in Our Unity: Reflecting on 250 Years of the Great Experiment

As we mark 250 years as a country, this Semiquincentennial year, I have found myself thinking a lot about how the name United States of America came to be. Specifically, the first half of that moniker: “United States.”

The more I researched it, the clearer it became that this was never simply a label slapped onto a new country. It represented an idea, one that our founders debated fiercely and staked the entire experiment on: that each state, formerly a colony, would remain independent in its local affairs yet united in its national purpose. They understood, from the very beginning, that the needs of a merchant in New York would look nothing like the needs of a farmer in Georgia, and they built a system designed to hold both truths at once.

In 250 years, we’ve had our fair share of disagreements, some of them nearly fatal to the union itself. Yet we somehow find a way to remain the United States: each state distinguished from the next, each region fitted together by common ground and, sometimes, common threats. A political experiment that many of its own architects expected to last only a few decades has instead reached two and a half centuries of existence. If we are going to survive another 250 years, we have to relearn how to do this together, deliberately, and not by accident.

Where “United States” Actually Came From

It is worth pausing on the history here, because it is more instructive than most people realize. Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published in January 1776, never actually used the phrase “United States of America.” Paine wrote of “United Colonies” and “FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA,” but not the final formulation. Historians now credit Paine with the first public use of the complete phrase in a newspaper article published on June 29, 1776, under the pen name “Republicus,” just days before he knew the phrase would appear in the Declaration of Independence itself. The National Archives cites the Declaration of Independence as the first known formal use of the term, which means the name of our country and the announcement of our unity were born in the same breath, on the same document.

That timing was not an accident. The delegates in Philadelphia were not declaring the birth of a single, consolidated nation the way France or Britain understood nationhood. They were declaring that thirteen separate, sovereign political bodies were choosing, deliberately and by consent, to bind themselves together. The word “united” came first because it had to be earned. Nothing about it was guaranteed.

Georgia’s Own Choice to Unite

Georgia’s own history bears this out. On January 2, 1788, a specially elected convention meeting in Augusta voted unanimously to ratify the U.S. Constitution, making Georgia the fourth state to join the Union. Georgia was the youngest of the original thirteen colonies, founded in 1733, and it did not have to move quickly. It chose to. The convention’s ratification message was, by historical account, short and direct, and Georgia was one of only three states to ratify unanimously, a fact that speaks to just how clearly Georgians of that era understood what unity would cost them and what it would earn them in return: federal protection, a stable currency, and a seat at the table in shaping the young nation’s future.

The Same Pattern, Written Into Our Own Counties

What strikes me most, researching all of this, is how the exact same pattern, independent communities choosing to unite, then subdividing, then re-forming around shared purpose, is written directly into the history of the four counties that make up District 157.

Tattnall County was established in 1801, carved from Montgomery County and named for Governor Josiah Tattnall. Decades later, Tattnall itself gave up territory to form new counties, including Evans County in August 1914, named for Confederate General Clement A. Evans. Appling County was created in December 1818 from land ceded by the Muscogee Creek Nation, and its earliest settlers came largely from South Carolina and, notably, from Tattnall County itself. And Jeff Davis County, the youngest of the four, was created in 1905 from parts of Appling and Coffee counties, with its county seat of Hazlehurst growing out of a literal meeting point, the spot where two railroad crews building the Macon and Brunswick Railroad met each other after building toward one another from opposite directions.

That last image has stuck with me: a town founded at the exact point where two separate efforts, moving independently toward a common goal, finally connected. That is, in miniature, the entire American story. It is certainly the story of this district. Every county line here represents a community that chose independence and interdependence at the same time, drawing its own boundary while remaining permanently bound to its neighbors by shared rivers, shared roads, shared markets, and, eventually, shared representation in a body like the Georgia House.

What This Means for District 157 Today

I do not raise this history as a civics lesson for its own sake. I raise it because I believe we have drifted from understanding what it actually requires of us. Too often today, “unity” gets treated as a slogan, invoked to paper over real disagreements rather than earned through the hard work of finding common ground. But real unity, the kind our founders and Georgia’s own founders practiced, was never about uniformity. It was about independent people choosing, again and again, to stand together because they understood that standing alone made them weaker.

That is exactly the choice facing Tattnall, Jeff Davis, Appling, and Evans Counties right now. A single rural county, on its own, does not have much leverage against a state Public Service Commission weighing a data center’s power demands against a farm family’s electric bill. One hospital board, on its own, cannot force Atlanta to fully apply for federal rural health relief dollars. But four counties, standing together, sending one unified voice to the State House, backed by the same instinct that carved Evans out of Tattnall and Jeff Davis out of Appling, that instinct to unite around common cause without losing local identity, carries real weight. For more on how that shared voice translates into specific fights over utility rates and farmland protection, read our agriculture and farm policy plan, and for how it applies to keeping our hospitals open, read our rural healthcare policy plan.

Unity and the Spirit of Liberty

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty. 2 Corinthians 3:17

As a minister of the Gospel, I wholeheartedly believe in the connection between unity and freedom. But where that Spirit actually dwells is the key question. On the day of Pentecost, it was only after the believers “were all with one accord in one place” that the Holy Spirit entered the room. It produced a boldness and a freedom none of them had experienced before, individually or collectively. The miracle did not happen to isolated people scattered in separate rooms. It happened because they were gathered, together, in agreement.

I believe the same principle holds true for a nation, a state, and a district. It is through our unity, freely chosen and continually renewed, that we build a stronger community, one where liberty is something we actually live day to day, not just something we recite once a year on the Fourth of July. A district where every family, whether in Reidsville, Hazlehurst, Baxley, or Claxton, is free and empowered to chase its own future, precisely because it draws on the strength of the counties standing beside it.

What You Can Do

Two hundred fifty years in, the great experiment still depends on ordinary people choosing to participate in it, the same way Georgia’s delegates chose unanimously to ratify in 1788, and the same way the railroad crews that founded Hazlehurst chose to keep building toward each other.

1. Register to vote and confirm your polling location with your county Board of Elections in Tattnall, Jeff Davis, Appling, or Evans County.
2. Show up to local civic and county commission meetings. Unity starts at the county line, not in Atlanta or Washington.
3. Talk with your neighbors across county lines. The issues facing Reidsville and the issues facing Hazlehurst are more alike than different, and that shared ground is our leverage.
4. Reach out to the King campaign if you want to get involved in building that unified voice for District 157 ahead of the next election.

Two hundred fifty years ago, thirteen independent states chose to become united states. One hundred and twenty years ago, the communities that would become Jeff Davis County chose to organize themselves out of Appling and Coffee Counties, not out of division, but out of a belief that local self-government, joined to something larger, makes everyone stronger. That is still the choice in front of us. I believe we make it the same way our forebears did: together.