On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence, signing and sealing the United States as a sovereign, independent nation. Not only did the Declaration of Independence proclaim the ideas at the nexus of the American experiment—namely, that an American government with the consent of the governed must protect the unalienable rights endowed to its citizens by their Creator—but it also serves as a foundational text for how the United States engages with the world.

On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan delivered the most forceful line of the Cold War in a speech in front of the Berlin Wall: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Embedded in this challenge—and in Reagan’s belief that the Berlin Wall represented the broader struggle between totalitarianism and freedom

On March 12, 1947, President Harry S. Truman delivered a speech to Congress asking to authorize $400 million in emergency assistance to Greece and Turkey as part of support to the Greek government against a Communist insurgency.

On February 22, 1946, George Kennan sent a 5,000-word diplomatic cable that shaped how the United States would understand and respond to the Soviet challenge for the rest of the Cold War.

On January 10th, 1945, Senator Arthur Vandenberg changed the course of U.S. foreign policy with his “Speech Heard Round the World.”