New Poll Finds, Just in Time for Independence Day, Many Americans Have No Clue About 1776

Marist released a poll on Friday that showed that many Americans are in the dark on their own history.

The poll found 58 percent of Americans knew that the United States declared its independence in 1776 while 26 percent had no idea and 16 percent said other years. Not surprisingly, younger Americans are the most ignorant group with only 31 percent of those surveyed under 30 knowing the correct year was 1776. We can take some comfort as a nation in the fact that 76 percent of those surveyed at least knew the United States declared independence from Great Britain.

I was blessed with parents who nourished my love of learning and my love of American history at a young age. By the time I was 5, I had memorized all the presidents of the United States in order (it was easier then, there were only 39 at the time). While my parents certainly -- and rightfully -- wrote me off as a hopeless eccentric, they always encouraged me. Some of my fondest memories of my childhood were when my mother would read to my siblings and I -- and sometimes I was able to sneak in glimpses of Americas past from Coopers "Last of the Mohicans" to Parkmans "The Oregon Trail." My father would always find teachable moments; I remember watching the Broadway show "Annie" and listening as he talked about Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt and the Depression.

My siblings usually showed incredible patience, as our parents -- usually after weeks of my constant whining -- took us to Gettysburg and Monticello and John Jays house up in Westchester County, N.Y. There were exceptions, of course -- every time I drive past the Olustee battlefield on Interstate 10, I wince and remember the horrified reaction of my brothers and sister when we first saw it sometime around 1986.

I was also fortunate enough to have had teachers who reinforced my curiosity about our past in junior high and high school. I had teachers at Wolfson High School in Jacksonville like Janet Coburn and Francis Brewster who encouraged my desire to learn more. A whole host of professors at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., like Jack Chatfield, Ron Spencer, Renny Fulco, Frank Kirkpatrick and Chris Doyle nourished my desire to learn more. It was nice to have teachers as professors instead of tenured bureaucrats relying on legions of teaching assistants while writing academic books that nobody would ever want to read.

Now I concede not everyone was as fortunate as I was in pursing my education or had the support team that I was blessed to have. Most Americans -- thankfully -- do not have a senior thesis on John C. Calhoun and a master's thesis on Edmund Ruffin collecting dust on their bookshelves. But this poll is the latest indicator that we, as a nation, have done a terrible job in telling our story. History is not a series of dates -- 1492, 1776, 1812, 1861, 1929, 1989 and so on. Its the story of men and women and the choices they made that shape the world we live in today. We see it all around us here in Florida. Why did the Spanish flourish in Florida while the French colonization effort here collapsed? Go to Fort Caroline and Matanzas on the First Coast. Why did the longest and most costly Indian war start in Florida? Visit the Dade Battlefield -- its right off I-75. Visiting the Kingsley Plantation on a brutal August day taught me a lot more about the horrors of slavery than most of the books I have read on the peculiar institution.

I hope with all the fireworks and hotdogs this weekend, there is at least some focus on what the Independence Day holiday is actually about. There are always teachable moments and stories to share, like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both dying on July 4, 1826 -- exactly 50 years after the Declaration they crafted was signed. The guy on your Sam Adams beer? He signed the Declaration and was enthusiastic about independence, but was not a fan of the proposed Constitution some 11 years later. There are many fascinating stories in our history -- and it is a national shame that so many of us do not know them or, even worse, do not care about them.