Though he was raised in a castle befitting a king, Sir Winston Churchill’s connections to America began before he was born. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was born in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. In a whirlwind romance, she met Lord Randolf Churchill and did what young lovers have done from time immemorial: they married against their parents' wishes. Not long after, the Brooklyn-born beauty would move to Blenheim Palace in England and give birth to the first of her two sons, Winston.
That American connection would continue throughout Churchill’s life. He crossed the ocean a remarkable 16 times—beginning in 1895 with a stop in New York City on his way to Cuba. His final visit to America came 66 years later—in New York City in 1961.
Americans have claimed Churchill as one of our own ever since his heroics helped save Europe from Nazi peril in World War II. And it is why the International Churchill Society is throwing a party in Philadelphia this week to pay tribute to the unique and historic relationship between the “The Old Lion” and the young republic that was his second home.
Though Churchill traveled to America as a soldier, a tourist, an author, a lecturer and even a prophet (his 1946 Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri), it was his winter visit to America in 1941 as a wartime leader that was his most important. The story of that visit—and the historic speech he delivered to a joint session of Congress the day after Christmas—revealed Churchill's status not just as a statesman but as a salesman, too.
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The day after the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill, who had just turned 67, packed his bags and headed for America on the most important trip of his life. And the world’s.
"With the fall of France, Britain stood alone, decisively inferior in military power to the Nazis," said Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College and author of Churchill's Trial. "The only thing that could save it was the English Channel—and entry into the war by the United States."
Few understood that stark reality better than Churchill. It’s why the prime minister was on a boat crossing the Atlantic just one day after Pearl Harbor. It was a 10-day trip through cold, storm-tossed seas. And a dangerous trip, too: German U-boats filled the Atlantic. There were serious concerns about Churchill's safety, but he wasn't deterred. This was work that had to be done in person.
Churchill's ship docked in Norfolk, Virginia, two weeks after the Pearl Harbor attack. He flew to Washington, D.C., and spent the next few days at the White House as a guest, talking, drinking, joking and smoking—keeping President Franklin D. Roosevelt up late into the night.
"It was astonishing to me that anyone could smoke so much and drink so much and keep perfectly well," first lady Eleanor Roosevelt said of Churchill.
Having successfully bonded with Roosevelt, Churchill moved to an equally important objective: bonding with Congress and the American public and selling them on the importance—the inevitability—of combining America and British forces to combat the Axis powers.
For days, Churchill worked on his speech, which he delivered the day after Christmas to a joint session of Congress. He began with these words showcasing his admiration for America:
"The fact that my American forebears have for so many generations played their part in the life of the United States, and that here I am, an Englishman, welcomed in your midst, makes this experience one of the most moving and thrilling in my life, which is already long and has not been entirely uneventful. I wish indeed that my mother, whose memory I cherish, across the vale of years, could have been here to see."
Churchill then made clear that our countries were connected by more than a common language.
"I was brought up in my father's house to believe in democracy. Trust the people. That was his message. Therefore, I have been in full harmony all my life with the tides which have flowed on both sides of the Atlantic against privilege and monopoly, and I have steered confidently towards the Gettysburg ideal of government of the people, by the people, for the people."
The speech then took a tough turn as Churchill walked Americans through the difficulty of the fight ahead of us. And the nature of our enemies.
"The forces ranged against us are enormous. They are bitter, they are ruthless. The wicked men and their factions, who have launched their peoples on the path of war and conquest ... They will stop at nothing. They have a vast accumulation of war weapons ... They have highly trained and disciplined armies, navies, and air services ... We have therefore, without doubt, a time of tribulation before us."
Churchill closed out his speech by invoking the spiritual dimension of the battle ahead, and the unique relationship that these two great allies—England and America—shared:
"I will say that he must indeed have a blind soul who cannot see that some great purpose and design is being worked out here below, of which we have the honor to be the faithful servants. It is not given to us to peer into the mysteries of the future. Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and American peoples will, for their own safety and for the good of all, walk together in majesty, in justice and in peace."
The crowd in the chamber roared with applause when the speech ended, with Churchill flashing the V-for-victory sign that would become his signature gesture.
"Study history, study history. In history lie all of the secrets of statecraft," Churchill once told a student who asked a question about the subject, according to historian Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill: Walking With Destiny.
On January 14, 1942, after nearly a month away from home, Churchill left America for war-torn London.
"It would take the New World, the United States, to come to the rescue of the Old," Churchill biographer Sir Martin Gilbert told an audience at Hillsdale College in 2006. "And emerge as the defenders of freedom."
Churchill no doubt loved America. But America loved him back—and still does. And loves him because he embodied virtues we’ve always seen in ourselves—and associate with American greatness: courage in crisis, infectious optimism, moral clarity, an unyielding refusal to accept defeat, and an admiration for the underdog.
Churchill may have been born in England, but his Brooklyn-to-Blenheim connection endures. And has at its heart not just a profound appreciation of our national character—but our nation’s birth certificate.
“The Declaration of Independence is not only an American document,” Churchill noted in a speech in London on July 4, 1918. “It follows on Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights as the third great title-deed on which the liberties of the English-speaking people are founded. By it we lost an Empire, but by it we also preserved an Empire. By applying its principles and learning its lesson we have maintained our communion with the powerful Commonwealths our children have established beyond the seas.”
Words worth celebrating—most appropriately—in Philadelphia on the 250th anniversary of our birth.
This essay was co-written with Vince Benedetto, director, International Churchill Society Board, and president, Churchill Society of Pennsylvania.