The American Spirit in Literature | Page 6

Relation" of the planting of the Virginia
colony in 1607. It was published in London in 1608. The Captain was a
typical Elizabethan adventurer, with a gift, like so many of his class,
for picturesque narrative. In what sense, if at all, may his writings on
American topics be classified as "American" literary productions? It is
clear that his experiences in the New World were only one phase of the
variegated life of this English soldier of fortune. But the American
imagination has persistently claimed him as representing something
peculiarly ours, namely, a kind of pioneer hardihood, resourcefulness,
leadership, which was essential to the exploration and conquest of the
wilderness. Most of Smith's companions were unfitted for the ordeal

which he survived. They perished miserably in the "starving time." But
he was of the stuff from which triumphant immigrants have ever been
made, and it is our recognition of the presence of these qualities in the
Captain which makes us think of his books dealing with America as if
they were "American books." There are other narratives by colonists
temporarily residing in the Virginia plantations which gratify our
historical curiosity, but which we no more consider a part of American
literature than the books written by Stevenson, Kipling, and Wells
during their casual visits to this country. But Captain Smith's "True
Relation" impresses us, like Mark Twain's "Roughing It," with being
somehow true to type. In each of these books the possible unveracities
in detail are a confirmation of their representative American character.
In other words, we have unconsciously formulated, in the course of
centuries, a general concept of "the pioneer." Novelists, poets, and
historians have elaborated this conception. Nothing is more inevitable
than our reaching back to the beginning of the seventeenth century and
endeavoring to select, among the thousands of Englishmen who
emigrated or even thought of emigrating to this country, those who
possessed the genuine heart and sinew of the permanent settler.
Oliver Cromwell, for instance, is said to have thought of emigrating
hither in 1637. If he had joined his friends John Cotton and Roger
Williams in New England, who can doubt that the personal
characteristics of "my brave Oliver" would today be identified with the
"American" qualities which we discover in 1637 on the shores of
Massachusetts Bay? And what an American settler Cromwell would
have made!
If we turn from physical and moral daring to the field of theological
and political speculation, it is easy today to select, among the writings
of the earliest colonists, certain radical utterances which seem to
presage the very temper of the late eighteenth century. Pastor John
Robinson's farewell address to the Pilgrims at Leyden in 1620
contained the famous words: "The Lord has more truth yet to break
forth out of His holy Word. I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition
of the reformed churches, who are come to a period in religion. . . .
Luther and Calvin were great and shining lights in their times, yet they
penetrated not into the whole counsel of God." Now John Robinson,
like Oliver Cromwell, never set foot on American soil, but he is

identified, none the less, with the spirit of American liberalism in
religion.
In political discussion, the early emergence of that type of
independence familiar to the decade 1765-75 is equally striking. In a
letter written in 1818, John Adams insisted that "the principles and
feelings which produced the Revolution ought to be traced back for two
hundred years, and sought in the history of the country from the first
plantations in America." "I have always laughed," he declared in an
earlier letter, "at the affectation of representing American independence
as a novel idea, as a modern discovery, as a late invention. The idea of
it as a possible thing, as a probable event, nay as a necessary and
unavoidable measure, in case Great Britain should assume an
unconstitutional authority over us, has been familiar to Americans from
the first settlement of the country."
There is, then, a predisposition, a latent or potential Americanism
which existed long before the United States came into being. Now that
our political unity has become a fact, the predisposition is certain to be
regarded by our own and by future generations as evidence of a state of
mind which made our separate national life inevitable. Yet to Thomas
Hutchinson, a sound historian and honest man, the last Royal Governor
of Massachusetts, a separate national life seemed in 1770 an
unspeakable error and calamity.
The seventeenth-century colonists were predominantly English, in
blood, in traditions, and in impulses. Whether we look at Virginia or
Plymouth or at the other colonies that were planted in swift succession
along the seaboard, it is clear that we are dealing primarily with men of
the English race. Most of them