Dean Poling

They didn’t know.

The Founding Fathers didn’t know it would take eight years to make the Declaration of Independence a reality.

Eight years of war. Eight years of George Washington not really winning decisive battles but keeping his army together, surviving, repeatedly, against Britain, what was then the world’s predominant superpower.

They didn’t know.

They didn’t know they would win. We take it for granted now. We act as if it was preordained that the American revolutionaries would win.

But they didn’t know. They had no crystal ball. Had they lost, the father of our country would have likely been hanged as a traitor to the crown. The Declaration of Independence would have been a death warrant to all of the signers.

They didn’t know.

Many people thought the Civil War wouldn’t last but a few months. They believed the states would reconcile, that some military rout or some compromise would be reached and the nation would be reunited within months.

They didn’t know.

They didn’t know it would take four long, bloody years. They didn’t know thousands would die. Abraham Lincoln didn’t know if his efforts to restore the union would be successful.

Because it is ancient history to us, we act as if the result was a foregone conclusion. Battlefield memorials and Civil War graveyards across the North and South prove it was not.

But they didn’t know.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill didn’t know if D-Day would be a success when they launched Allied forces onto the beaches of Normandy. They didn’t know if Allied forces could establish a foothold on the shores of Nazi-controlled Europe.

Thousands of American, British and other Allied soldiers died that day but Roosevelt and Churchill feared tens of thousands would die on D-Day. They feared the Allied Forces may be pushed back into the sea. We know D-Day was a new chapter in the beginning of the end of Nazism.

But they didn’t know.

The historical events we have heard about since childhood, the events we have known from school, books, television and movies, the things we know and we think we know, the things that have been known like scripture for generations, we take these things for granted.

We take them for granted to such an extent we believe even the people involved knew the outcomes.

We think they knew but they didn’t know.

The old men we revered as the Greatest Generation were little more than boys when they fought the steel might of Hitler and imperial Japan. They were afraid but they went. They didn’t know how long they would be gone or even if they would come back. Many didn’t come back. But they went. They persevered.

But they didn’t know.

We’ve often been bemused by older folks who kept stockpiles of sugar, flour and other staples in their cupboards. They knew how the Great Depression and World War II ended but they remembered the times of want and rationing from their childhoods and youths. They didn’t know but they knew to be prepared just in case.

Throughout history, people didn’t know how things would end. They didn’t know if they would get better or worse, if they would win or lose, if a gamble would end in liberty or death.

They didn’t know.

But they hoped. They dreamed. They fought. They struggled. They dealt with disagreements among themselves. They dealt with betrayals and false hopes. They mourned. They grieved. They sacrificed. They endured. They persevered. They planned. They overcame.

They didn’t know but they did so many things with the hope of shaping what we know.

Now, we don’t know. And we can’t assume we know. We can only look to the lessons of our ancestors for the strength and guidance to do what we must do in our moment of history.

That’s all we know.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.