September 1, 2026
by Stephen T. Messenger
How many of us have actually read the foundational documents that shape our nation? I’ve done…okay. If I’m honest, I’ve read many, but have also fallen short on classics like the Federalist Papers. Perhaps you can relate. For those, I’ve relied on summaries, secondary analyses, or distant memories from early in my career rather than directly digesting the core texts of American strategy.
If we want to be students of our nation and mildly interesting at a dinner party, we can’t afford to outsource our understanding of the American experiment. We need to go back to the primary sources.
To bridge this gap, I took a hard look at our nation’s core strategic writings and assembled a twenty-document canon. Sure, it could have been 10 or 50, but these 20 are a great starting point to develop foundational knowledge across our history. Over the next month, I plan to read one per day (with 10 days of flexibility) and try to digest the American experiment and its evolution over 250 years.
Rather than a simple collection of “greatest hits,” these texts are organized into five distinct modules that trace the intellectual evolution of American statecraft, from building the republic to managing global power. Each one has a hyperlink to a public website and a page count. The average reading is 8 pages when you take out the three biggest ones (there are a 66, 30, and 25-pager in there… sorry! But I did throw in the 272-word Gettysburg Address!), and 8 of the 20 are under 6 pages.
It’s my attempt to get a little closer to our shared history and understand why we do the things we do. I hope you’ll join me.
Module 1 — Building the Republic: What kind of nation did the Founders intend to create?
The first module establishes the political foundations upon which American strategy rests. Before we can understand American grand strategy, we must understand the American conception of legitimate government, individual liberty, federal power, and the relationship between competing interests and national purpose.
These four readings also establish an important tension that runs throughout the entire canon: How do you create a government powerful enough to protect the nation without creating one powerful enough to threaten liberty? Not an easy question, and one our forefathers wrestled greatly with.
1. Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence (1776) (3 pages)
Why read it: This is the foundational statement of American political purpose and gives leaders the opportunity to ask whether American strategy is ultimately rooted in interests, ideals, or both.
2. Constitution of the United States (1787) (15 pages)
Why read it: The Constitution isn’t simply a civics document; it establishes who possesses the authority to make war, raise armies, conduct foreign policy, and employ military power.
3. James Madison, Federalist No. 10 (1787) (6 pages)
Why read it: Our government operates in political systems filled with competing interests. Madison provides an enduring framework for understanding why political friction isn’t necessarily a failure of the system, but a necessary component.
4. James Madison, Federalist No. 51 (1788) (5 pages)
Why read it: It provides an explanation for why American leaders must work through competing centers of power rather than simply exercising authority.
Module 2 — Preserving the Republic: What does it take to keep the American experiment alive?
The Founders understood that winning independence was easier than preserving a republic. American strategy begins with creating a republic, but it quickly evolves into the struggle to preserve it. This module examines the internal vulnerabilities of the American system and the gap between American ideals and American practice.
Our nation’s founders wrestled with a strategic problem: America’s greatest threats don’t always originate outside its borders.
5. George Washington, Farewell Address (1796) (16 pages)
Why read it: Washington offers an early American theory of strategic restraint, warning that political division and foreign entanglement can undermine national power from within.
6. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835/1840) (Ch VI and VII only, ~10 pages)
Why read it: An outsider provides us with a valuable perspective on the American strategic culture that emerged from its political institutions and society.
7. Abraham Lincoln, Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield (1838) (9 pages)
Why read it: Lincoln, early in his career, intellectually struggled with understanding the conditions necessary for democratic government to survive.
8. Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (1852) (19 pages)
Why read it: This forces us to confront America’s most heinous crime of slavery and why a nation couldn’t separate the values it claimed to defend when its society was not living them out.
Module 3 — War and National Purpose: What is worth fighting for, and what does victory mean?
This module moves from foundational theory to the realities of war and national purpose. The Civil War provides the most profound American case study in the relationship between political objectives, military sacrifice, national identity, and the meaning of victory. But as national power expanded, the U.S. had to expand its strategy and define what’s worth fighting for.
The module covers Lincoln to Mahan to Wilson to demonstrate how American strategic thought expanded from continental survival to international power and global responsibility.
9. Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863) (1 page)
Why read it: In just 272 words, Lincoln connects political purpose, military sacrifice, national identity, and strategic endurance better than almost any American leader before or since.
10. Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (1865) (2 pages)
Why read it: This is perhaps the best American example of a leader connecting war’s political purpose to the postwar political order and understanding that winning the war isn’t the same as achieving a durable peace.
11. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (1890) (Pages 25-59, The beginning of Chapter 1, 34 pages)
Why read it: Mahan helps the nation expand from looking inward to looking outward through the lens of seapower and develops a grand strategy across geography, economics, military power, and national ambition.
12. Woodrow Wilson, Fourteen Points (1918) (5 pages)
Why read it: Wilson represents a major transformation in American strategic thought: the United States moves from asking, “How do we protect America?” to asking, “What international order should America help create?”
Module 4 — America as a Global Power: What should America do with enormous power?
The United States entered the twentieth century as a major economic and military power and emerged from World War II as the globe’s most powerful state, shifting from isolated to influential. This module examines the intellectual transition from isolation and limited engagement to permanent global involvement.
The key question is how Americans decided that power should be used.
13. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “The Arsenal of Democracy” (1940) (8 pages)
Why read it: The speech illustrates the strategic relationship between industrial capacity, national policy, alliances, and indirect support to partners.
14. Harry S. Truman, Truman Doctrine (1947) (6 pages)
Why read it: This is the moment when American strategic commitments become explicitly global, providing a framework for how leaders expand a local crisis into broader strategic objectives.
15. George F. Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” (1947) (17 pages)
Why read it: The Cold War changed everything, and this document translates an adversary’s political nature into a coherent strategic approach.
16. NSC-68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security (1950) (66 pages)
Why read it: It provides an exceptional case study in threat assessment, strategic assumptions, risk, resource allocation, and the translation of policy into national strategy.
Module 5 — Control the Sword: How does a democracy maintain a powerful military without letting military power dominate it?
The final module brings the canon back to the military profession, confronting the enduring question of how a republic should wield military force. America has always wrestled with a fundamental paradox: the republic needs a powerful military to defend itself, but a powerful military must remain subordinate to the political system it serves.
These readings allow us to examine that relationship from the Revolutionary era through the Cold War and into the professional military culture we inhabit today.
17. George Washington, “Sentiments on a Peace Establishment” (1783) (15 pages)
Why read it: This is an early American discussion of the problem of creating a military capable of defending the republic without creating a permanent military threat to it.
18. Douglas MacArthur, “Duty, Honor, Country” (1962) (5 pages)
Why read it: It provides a distinctly military conception of professional identity and service.
19. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address (1961) (7 pages)
Why read it: Coming from a five-star general and former Supreme Allied Commander who became president, the speech provides a warning about the relationship between military power, economic interests, political institutions, and democratic control.
20. John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address (1961) (4 pages)
Why read it: Kennedy offers a lens on personal accountability as a citizen and an American view of national purpose, alliances, sacrifice, and global leadership.
We Should All Read Our History
It is too easy today to use AI to generate a list of key readings, summarize them, and move on. I know because I just did it. I leveraged Gemini to help compile and summarize the above list, found a lot of errors, couldn’t get it to give good hyperlinks, and remembered the high points. But by not reading these documents in their entirety and taking notes, I still have no idea what they’re about.
I hope you’ll join me in digesting all or some of these over the next month. This will make you a better American citizen and way more interesting at your next party.
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