The December 7 aerial bombing of Pearl Harbor, triggering immediate declarations of war, was the consolidation. Most Americans, realizing that everything they had achieved was now at risk, felt (in Senator’s Inouye’s words) a “spirit of America… that united and galvanized our people.” Columnist Walter Lippmann wrote, “Overnight we have become… at long last a united people… an awakened people—wide awake to the stark truth that the very existence of the Nation, the lives, the liberties, and the fortunes of all of us are in the balance.”
