From the start, America has been a journey, not a destination.

The journey has been a literal one, from Paul Revere's ride to the Underground Railroad to the Oregon Trail. A country founded as 13 colonies clustered along the Atlantic Coast has become a cross-continent behemoth of 50 states and 342 million people.

The journey has been metaphorical, too. A nation where the right to vote had been generally limited to property-owning White men has now watched a Black man elected as president, a woman sworn in as speaker of the House, and eight justices who were not White men confirmed for the Supreme Court .

Through it all, the debates over what defines the United States have been fierce and sometimes violent. What rights? Whose rights? Who decides?

The founders themselves were at times

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