American Identity
The American identity, which first emerged in the colonial era, continued to evolve in the 1820s and 1830s. Citizens of the United States further distanced themselves from their European counterparts. Consider this issue while reading the following quotes from the period.
Norwegian immigrant, Gjert Gregoriussen Hovland, wrote the following in a letter to his home country in 1831:
No, everyone must work for his living here [in the United States], and it makes no difference whether he is of low or of high estate. It would heartily please me if I could learn that everyone of you who are in need and have little chance of gaining support for yourselves and your families would make up your mind to leave Norway and come to America, for, even if many more were to come, there would still be room here for all. For all those who are willing to work there is no lack of employment and business here. It is possible for all to live in comfort and without suffering want.
Historian George Bancroft spoke these words in an 1835 address at Williams College:
The absence of prejudices of the old world leaves us here the opportunity of consulting independent truth; and man is left to apply the instinct of freedom to every social relation and public interest. We have approached so near to nature, that we can hear her gentlest whispers; we have made Humanity our lawgiver and our oracle; and, therefore, the nation receives, vivifies and applies principles, which in Europe the wisest accept with distrust. Freedom of mind and of conscience, freedom of the seas, freedom of industry, equality of franchises, each great truth is firmly grasped, comprehended and enforced; for the multitude is neither rash nor fickle.… Political action has never been so consistent and so unwavering, as when it results from a feeling of principle, diffused through society.
Frenchman, Alexis de Tocquevill,e made the following observation during his trip to America in the early 1830s:
In France, the press combines a two-fold centralization; almost all its power is centered in the same spot, and, so to speak, in the same hands; for its organs are far from numerous... Neither of these kinds of centralization exists in America. The United States have no metropolis; the intelligence and the power of the people are disseminated through all the parts of this vast country, and instead of radiating from a common point, they cross each other in every direction; the Americans have nowhere established any central direction of opinion, any more than the conduct of affairs.
