The Colonial American Dream

Introduction

The roots of the American dream can be traced all the way back to the first colonists to settle the New World. The Puritans who fled religious persecution in England became self-made successes throughout New England largely on the strength of their spiritual beliefs that it was preordained. For them, life on earth was a constant battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil, and the only way to battle evil was to be ambitious, work hard, and always strive for success. Their religion taught them that prosperity on earth would eventually lead to spiritual peace and eternal life. They sought wealth and status, but only to reap the rewards of heaven.

Colonial literature is rife with Puritanical and religious themes, but slavery, the American Revolution, and political and cultural change also appear as topics of special interest in the novels, poetry, short stories, essays, and letters from and about this very unique moment in American history—the moment the American dream was born.

Religion

Puritanical colonial literature reveals the Pilgrims' belief that they were God's chosen people—the new Israelites—whom God protected on their way to the promised land. Because they were chosen, they felt a special responsibility to God and God's divine plan, which demanded they live according to God's Word. Bible scripture, then, is often quoted in the works of Puritan writers, as are references to sins against God and punishment for offenses made against God. Religious literature from colonial times also reveals the Puritanical belief that America was the result of God's providential design, that the American experience was reliant on Puritan beliefs and codes of behavior.

William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation describes the trials experienced by Pilgrims in England, Holland, and North America from 1620 to 1647. In it, Bradford regards his fellow Pilgrims as chosen people destined to fulfill God's divine plan who are, in essence, repeating the biblical history of the Israelites. The most widely recognized section of the book is chapter 9, the part of Bradford's story that tells "Of their Voyage, and how they Passed the Sea; and of their Safe Arrival at Cape Cod." The premise of the chapter is that God provided divine guardianship over the Puritans as they made their way to North America, just as he did for the wandering Israelites before finding the promised land of Canaan.

Once the Pilgrims arrive at Cape Cod, though, Bradford shifts his biblical reference and compares their landing to Acts 28.2, which describes how Paul's shipwrecked company was treated by the inhabitants of Malta. Unlike Paul's hosts who protected them against the cold and fed and sheltered them for three months, the Pilgrims found little welcome in their arrival to the New World:

Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation (as may be remembered by that which went before), they had now no friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies; no houses or much less town to repair to, to seek for succour.

The adversity the Pilgrims faced at Cape Cod only fuels the fire of Bradford's belief that he and his fellow settlers had made it to the promised land and would continue to be protected by God's divine grace. He concludes chapter 9 with these words:

Yea, let them which have been redeemed of the Lord, show how he hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered in the desert wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry, and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord his loving kindness, and his wonderful works before the sons of men.

Mary Rowlandson's Captivity Narrative of a Colonial Woman, February, 1675, regarded by many historians as the first American bestseller, echoes the same religious sentiments found in Bradford's book. In her autobiographical account of being taken captive by Indians in 1675, she liberally quotes scripture and credits her faith in the providence of God for her eventual reunion with the surviving members of her family.

Rowlandson's belief that God had orchestrated her capture and release only strengthened her faith. Her experience caused her to strive even harder to live according to Scripture and fulfill the covenant God had ordained for her and her fellow Pilgrims. This covenant, among other Puritanical beliefs, is described in Cotton Mather's 1702 Magnalia Christi Americana, but with far greater literary opulence and grandeur.

Mather, a Puritanical intellectual, minister, and author, attempted in his seven-book, two-volume collection to detail the religious development of the New England colonies from 1620 to 1698. The Latin title, usually translated The Ecclesiastical History of New England, hints at the many Latin, Hebrew, and Greek quotes found within the pages of Mather's analysis of the American experiment.

A portion of the Magnalia offers Mather's description of the Salem Witch Trials, the infamous moment in the history of Puritan America of which the minister played a vital role. The trials took place over the course of several months during 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. During that time, men and women accused and convicted of practicing witchcraft were hanged. The trials inspired a widespread witch-hunting hysteria that died out almost as quickly as it started. The witch-hunt has since become synonymous with a particularly American experience, a warning to learn from the mistakes of history lest they be repeated.

Nathaniel Hawthorne reminds readers of this event in The Scarlet Letter (1850). Hawthorne was especially interested in the history of Salem, Massachusetts, where he was born and raised, and—not coincidentally—where his ancestor, John Hathorne, had participated in the trials. Having inherited the guilt of his ancestors for their part in the shameful trials, the writer sought to expose the obsessiveness and spiritual intolerance of the Puritans by revealing it in historical fiction. The Scarlet Letter focuses on the societal effects of guilt and anxiety in a sin-obsessed Puritan colony. In the story, Hester Prynne is condemned to wear a letter "A" for "adulteress" on her clothing as a sign of shame after giving birth to a daughter while her husband was apparently lost at sea. Prynne refuses to divulge the name of the child's father, bears the letter on her breast with dignity, and eventually becomes an important mother figure to the women in her community. In the final chapter of the book, the author writes,

But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne, here, in New England, that in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed,—of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it,—resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester's life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too.

Seen through the lens of the Puritanical world Hawthorne sought to criticize, one can see the dark side of the American dream, its good intentions gone wrong, and the paths it would have to take to become something that was no longer "sorrowed over."

Education

One of those paths was led by Benjamin Franklin whose Poor Richard's Almanack, an entertaining and instructive annual magazine published from the 1730s to the 1750s, encouraged American colonists to procure wealth through frugality and hard work. Franklin used wit, humor, and common sense—not religion—to inspire Almanack readers to achieve the American dream of success through industry. Franklin was interested in bettering American society in every way and knew, from his own experience with reading and books, that educating the masses was a fundamental step to their improvement. He also recognized the accessibility of periodicals over books.

Franklin wrote the aphorisms that filled Poor Richard's Almanack to educate the common folk who rarely, if ever, bought books. Although Franklin was an accomplished printer, author, inventor, statesman, scientist, and diplomat, he used the homey, folksy language of the people in his Almanack to ensure that his lessons would be read and remembered. A testament to his foresight is the fact that many, such as "Eat to live, and not live to eat" and "A penny saved is a penny earned" are still respected as wisdom today.

Opportunity

Slavery in America began around 1619 when twenty enslaved Africans were brought by a Dutch ship to the Virginia colony of Jamestown. Almost 250 years later, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished legal slavery in the United States in 1865.

Phillis Wheatley—thought to have been born in West Africa—was purchased by the wife of a wealthy Boston businessman when she was just seven or eight years old. When the frail, demure child showed signs of unusual intelligence, her owners decided to educate her rather than train her to be a house servant. Wheatley published her first poem in 1767, which led to other publications that brought the young African American woman widespread acclaim. Her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was widely regarded as a work of genius when it was published in 1773. Because she received a largely religious education, most of her poems focus on Christian themes with classic elegies dominating the collection. She rarely wrote about her own situation. One of the few poems that mention slavery, "On Being Brought From Africa to America," is hardly an indictment of the practice:

   Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
   Taught my benighted soul to understand
   That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
   Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
   Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
   "Their colour is a diabolic die."
   Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,
   May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

While Wheatley was denied most of the opportunities treasured by so many of her fellow free colonials, she presents the controversial view that her life was improved as a slave. The poem has drawn criticism from modern African American literary scholars for its implicit endorsement of slavery. Nonetheless, Wheatley is regarded as one of the more gifted poets of her time and an important American literary figure.

A contemporary of Wheatley's, a French immigrant and New York citizen, also wrote glowing accounts about America while glossing over the issue of slavery. J. Hector St. John de Crévecoeur was born in Normandy in 1735, educated in Bourbon, then moved to New York where he became a naturalized citizen in 1765. His Letters from an American Farmer, published in 1782, is a collection of twelve letters written from the point of view of a farmer named James who records his travels from Martha's Vineyard to Nantucket to Charlestown. The letters were responsible for shaping many Europeans' perceptions of America as well as some of the ideas later adopted by the Romantics. Letter 3, titled, "What is an American?", is a celebration of the fledgling country, a place where oppressed Europeans are given the chance to become independent, self-interested landowners. Some historians go so far as to trace the concept of the American dream to de Crévecoeur, who wrote in letter 3,

Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry which began long since in the east; they will finish the great circle…. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labour; his labour is founded on the basis of nature, self-interest; can it want a stronger allurement?

Change

John and Abigail Adams exchanged over a thousand letters between 1762 and 1801. These treasured American documents chronicle a wealth of social, cultural, and political change that occurred while John Adams served in the Continental Congress, on various diplomatic assignments, as vice president for two terms under George Washington, and then as the second U.S. president. The letters reflect the temper of the times before, during, and after the American Revolution and cover important moments in American history including the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the resulting emergence of American democracy. According to Gordon S. Wood's 2004 review of The Letters of John and Abigail Adams,

Indeed, as early as 1774 Abigail reminded John that slavery had "always appeared a most iniquitous scheme to me—to fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as we have. You know my mind on this subject." It is Abigail's outspokenness on subjects such as slavery that most distinguishes the Adamses' marriage from those of the other Founders, and indeed from those of most eighteenth-century couples…. Every generation of Americans has read into the Adamses' marriage, and into Abigail's role in it, whatever the times seemed to require. During the past generation the times required a marriage of equals and a spokeswoman for feminism and women's rights, and the Adamses' marriage and Abigail seemed ideally to fit the bill.

Changes in American culture were not always determined by politics. Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) paints a picture of the vast cultural change brought about by the American Revolution. In Irving's story, Rip Van Winkle, an idler who appreciates leisure and is content with his country life, falls asleep for twenty years only to wake and find his slow and happy life challenged by industry and materialism. The story is an indictment of the ethic of hard work and thrift promoted by Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard'sAlmanack, whose aphorisms helped shape the American consciousness in the years following the Revolution. Irving's story, in both style and content, reflects a burgeoning discomfort with the rapid changes experienced by Americans at a difficult time in their history.

Inspiration

The changes that shaped the American consciousness after the Revolution were indelible enough to impact writers over a century later. Curiosity about the historic events leading up to the Revolution led one such writer, Robert W. Chambers, to publish a young adult novel, War Paint and Rouge, in 1931. Hoping his own interest in the French and Indian War might intrigue young readers, he wrote a romantic adventure story about the French capture of Fort William Henry and their loss of Louisburg.

Thirteen years later, Esther Forbes published Johnny Tremain (1943), another young adult novel set in the early years of the republic. Forbes's book focuses on young Johnny Tremain, an American patriot and revolutionary soldier, who matures throughout the course of the book. Forbes originally wrote Johnny Tremain because she wanted to show children of the twentieth century how hard life was for early American children. Then, after the book was published, America found itself in yet another revolutionary struggle: World War II. In 1944, the year of D-Day and the invasion of Normandy, Johnny Tremain won the Newbery Medal, largely due to the book's realistic depiction of the Revolutionary era, a time that found the American dream's focus slightly shifted but firmly rooted in the concept of independence and hard-won success.

Conclusion

Literature of and about the colonial history of the United States provides as much insight into that past era as it does into our present day. The ideals that inspired the earliest Americans to build their country from the ground up remain the ideals that continue to power modern American dreams. Belief in religious freedom, the power of education, opportunities to be seized, and the possibility of positive change inspired the first wave of American settlers, just as they have inspired Americans—whether by birth or by choice—for centuries.

SOURCES

Bradford, William, Of Plymouth Plantation: 1620–1647, Modern Library, 1981; reprint, The Plymouth Colony Archive, etext.virginia.edu/users/deetz/Plymouth/bradford.html (December 26, 2006).

de Crévecoeur, J. Hector St. John, "Letter 3" of Letters from an American Farmer, reprinted from the original ed. by W. P. Trent, The University of Virginia, 1904, xroads.virginia.edu/∼hyper/CREV/letter03.html (December 7, 2006).

Franklin, Benjamin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1773, usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/loa/bf1733.htm (December 7, 2006).

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter, Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1850; reprint, Bartleby.com, 1999, www.bartleby.com/83 (December 26, 2006).

Wheatley, Phyllis, "On Being Brought from Africa to America," in Concise Anthology of American Literature 5th Ed., edited by George McMichael, et al., Prentice Hall, 2001, p. 379; originally published in Poems on Various Subjects, 1773.

Wood, Gordon S., "Pursuit of Happiness: A Review of The Letters of John and Abigail Adams," in the New Republic Online, April 8, 2004, (December 7, 2006).