This Is America: Introducing the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites

The following is a lightly edited transcript of a speech delivered on Oct. 27, 2026, at Mount Vernon for an America’s 250th Leaders Reception and Dinner.

It is my great pleasure to introduce the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites, the 13 original colonies version.

Many of you have probably noticed that exhibits at our nation’s historic sites have changed in recent years. Some of you, like me, have had conversations with tour guides about those changes.

Sites regularly put forth the errant notion that the Constitution is a pro-slavery document, or they contend that the principle “all men are created equal” rather than being a truth applicable to all men and all times, included only white, property-owning men.

Apart from the more obvious distortions are the unknown unknowns. No one can be an expert in all eras and aspects of the American heritage, and many people go to historic sites in order to learn.

The battle over our historic sites is about America and America’s people, about the origin story that unites us, the principles that define us, and the heritage we steward. The American story was written in real places across this country and continues to be comprehended by the mind and carried forward on the hearts of the citizens who call this nation home.

Disagreement about our history and origin story is a disagreement about what it means to be human, about the truth of equal dignity enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, and about obedience to nature and nature’s God.

As President Coolidge said on the occasion of our 150th anniversary,

No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.

These are some of the reasons we are releasing the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites for America’s 250th birthday. The Guide tells the American story—replete with that story’s principles—through place. The homepage pinpoints notable historic sites across the country, eventually to include sites in all 50 states.

Each receives an A, B, or C grade on its operations based on standards of accuracy and comprehension, proportionality, and ideological bias. Evaluations recommend educational resources, identify and explain inaccuracies, and offer tips for families with young children.

The authors of the evaluations are knowledgeable individuals whose backgrounds match the sites themselves. So, a poet reviewed Edgar Allan Poe’s house.

This both inserts third-party accountability into the historic-site space and furnishes the Guide with a valuable perspective, a perspective that helps readers rediscover the American heritage. For example, the evaluator of Noah Webster’s House, of Webster dictionary fame, emphasizes the importance of language for forming a common character and an exceptional nation.

It is quite fitting for us to introduce sites in the 13 colonies here today at Mount Vernon, as for Washington’s birthday in 2026, we will be revealing the complete map. That is, complete for now.

A form on the website allows people to indicate if a site has changed since it was last reviewed, voice disagreement with an evaluation, or recommend another site to evaluate, allowing us to crowdsource some of this work to the American public.

By introducing this project before the summer, families will be able to travel to these historic sites, equipped with their Heritage Guide, to celebrate America 250. As our lives are more disembodied, customizable, and populated with screens, real-world activities we share with friends, family members, and fellow citizens are increasingly precious. Since human beings are embodied, and that matters, going to the places where history really happened matters.

Visits to locations like Mount Vernon form lasting memories in the minds of America’s children, memories shared across generations and partisan lines, and the maintenance and stewardship of memory are necessary tasks of preserving a republic. Historic sites form the landscape of our public education.

It is the responsibility of America’s citizenry to educate ourselves about our heritage and rededicate ourselves to the principles that have guided and defined this nation for nearly 250 years.

In recent years, many have wondered if we are experiencing the last gasps of our great republic, if America is in the declining, rather than rising, phase of empire. Parents question whether America will become a mere territory devoid of a commanding ethos, or a promise that offers and means less for their children than it did for them.

At such moments of seemingly receding greatness, it is, as Coach Lombardi famously said, time to get back to fundamentals: “Gentlemen, this is a football.” It is within the providence of America’s 250th anniversary to remind ourselves who we are and what this nation stands for. “Fellow citizens, this is America.”

• It is a land that patriots, in more than one Pennsylvania field, consecrated far above our poor power to add or detract, ground that stretches from Gettysburg to Antietam, to the places we ourselves will rest next to our families and fellow citizens. This is America.

• Four score and seven years before that battle at Gettysburg, Monticello’s Jefferson gave expression to the American mind at Independence Hall. A single people risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor out of dedication to an unstoried experiment and a principle: All men are created equal. This is America.

• That spirited Revolutionary generation would recognize the character of two enterprising brothers who led America into flight from North Carolina and would find no shame in the company of the Challenger crew who honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives and waved goodbye as they “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.” This is America.

The Heritage Guide to Historic Sites invites Americans on a lessoned journey through the basics. America is a place, a people, and a proposition proven through our continued dedication to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. And she is ours to rediscover.

My fellow citizens, this is America.