The American Spirit in Literature | Page 4

THE PIONEERS
II. THE FIRST COLONIAL LITERATURE
III. THE THIRD AND FOURTH GENERATION
IV. THE REVOLUTION
V. THE KNICKERBOCKER GROUP
VI. THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS
VII. ROMANCE, POETRY, AND HISTORY
VIII. POE AND WHITMAN
IX. UNION AND LIBERTY
X. A NEW NATION
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN LITERATURE

CHAPTER I
. THE PIONEERS

The United States of America has been from the beginning in a
perpetual change. The physical and mental restlessness of the American
and the temporary nature of many of his arrangements are largely due
to the experimental character of the exploration and development of
this continent. The new energies released by the settlement of the
colonies were indeed guided by stern determination, wise forethought,
and inventive skill; but no one has ever really known the outcome of
the experiment. It is a story of faith, of Effort, and expectation, and
desire, And something evermore about to be.
An Alexander Hamilton may urge with passionate force the adoption of
the Constitution, without any firm conviction as to its permanence. The
most clear-sighted American of the Civil War period recognized this
element of uncertainty in our American adventure when he declared:
"We are now testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived
and so dedicated, can long endure." More than fifty years have passed
since that war rearmed the binding force of the Constitution and
apparently sealed the perpetuity of the Union. Yet the gigantic
economic and social changes now in progress are serving to show that
the United States has its full share of the anxieties which beset all
human institutions in this daily altering world.
"We are but strangers in an inn, but passengers in a ship," said Roger
Williams. This sense of the transiency of human effort, the perishable
nature of human institutions, was quick in the consciousness of the
gentleman adventurers and sober Puritan citizens who emigrated from
England to the New World. It had been a familiar note in the poetry of
that Elizabethan period which had followed with such breathless
interest the exploration of America. It was a conception which could be
shared alike by a saint like John Cotton or a soldier of fortune like John
Smith. Men are tent-dwellers. Today they settle here, and tomorrow
they have struck camp and are gone. We are strangers and sojourners,
as all our fathers were.
This instinct of the camper has stamped itself upon American life and
thought. Venturesomeness, physical and moral daring, resourcefulness
in emergencies, indifference to negligible details, wastefulness of
materials, boundless hope and confidence in the morrow, are
characteristics of the American. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say
that the "good American" has been he who has most resembled a good

camper. He has had robust health--unless or until he has abused it,--a
tolerant disposition, and an ability to apply his fingers or his brain to
many unrelated and unexpected tasks. He is disposed to blaze his own
trail. He has a touch of prodigality, and, withal, a knack of keeping his
tent or his affairs in better order than they seem. Above all, he has been
ever ready to break camp when he feels the impulse to wander. He likes
to be "foot-loose." If he does not build his roads as solidly as the
Roman roads were built, nor his houses like the English houses, it is
because he feels that he is here today and gone tomorrow. If he has
squandered the physical resources of his neighborhood, cutting the
forests recklessly, exhausting the soil, surrendering water power and
minerals into a few far-clutching fingers, he has done it because he
expects, like Voltaire's Signor Pococurante, "to have a new garden
tomorrow, built on a nobler plan." When New York State grew too
crowded for Cooper's Leather-Stocking, he shouldered his pack,
whistled to his dog, glanced at the sun, and struck a bee-line for the
Mississippi. Nothing could be more typical of the first three hundred
years of American history.
The traits of the pioneer have thus been the characteristic traits of the
American in action. The memories of successive generations have
tended to stress these qualities to the neglect of others. Everyone who
has enjoyed the free life of the woods will confess that his own
judgment upon his casual summer associates turns, quite naturally and
almost exclusively, upon their characteristics as woodsmen. Out of the
woods, these gentlemen may be more or less admirable divines,
pedants, men of affairs; but the verdict of their companions in the forest
is based chiefly upon the single question of their adaptability to the
environment of the camp. Are they quick of eye and foot, skillful with
rod and gun, cheerful on rainy days, ready to do a little more than their
share of drudgery? If so, memory holds them.
Some such