As our country observes the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this year, Judy Woodruff is kicking off a new chapter in her series, America at a crossroads.

This year, she'll explore what it means to be an American, how that idea has evolved since the nation's founding and where we might be headed.

She begins by looking at how closely our identity as Americans hues to the template created

by war hero and first president George Washington.

We refer to this as our smoking gun letter because you can start to see him thinking about

the fact that because he's an American, he's actually a second-class citizen. Inside a temperature control vault, historian Lindsey Chavinsky is showing me a letter written

by a then 25-year-old commander of the Virginia Regiment, George Washington.

He'd been fighting alongside the British during the French and Indian War and was angry at the lack of royal commissions for him and his fellow Virginia officers.

We think about what it means to be a full-fledged citizen.

We think about economic participation, political participation, but also can you advance on your own merits?

And he has this realization early that he's not going to in the British system.

Nearly two decades before the American Revolution, Washington foreshadowed the collision with

Britain that would lead to the creation of the United States and our identity as Americans,

a question that 250 years later, many continue to wrestle with.

Being an American means being able to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, unimpeded.

Believing in those ideals that were set up at the founding of our nation, that's what being an American is.

We asked our viewers about being an American and the responsibilities that come with that identity.

In order to be a citizen, that is an active job description. You need to learn. You need to understand and you need

to participate. To live by who got elected, you know, all the various viewpoints that people have,

don't have to embrace them, but you have to live with them. We are a nation of immigrants.

And, you know, except for those that are fully Native American, at some point in the last 15 generations, our ancestors immigrated here.

We're the beacon on the hill. Everybody wants to come here. Everybody has opportunity. No matter who you are, come, do your best, and you can succeed.

...