The Epic of America Library Binding – 1941

I'm a book junkie. My favorite pastime is laying in my hammock with a book. Lately I've been engrossed by Hunter S. Thompson. A recurring theme in Thompson's work is the American Dream. We all have an idea of what the American Dream is, but where did it come from? The answer is this book.
Judging by the size I was expecting a long dry tome, something I'd have to fight throught. Instead The Epic of America is what a history book ought to be. It reads more like an adventure story than a scholarly text. I'd read it to my kids if I had any.

Essential reading for anybody wanting to understand the origins and nature of our national character.

What a book

James Truslow Adams (1878-1949) was a freelance American writer and historian; who won the Pulitzer Prize in history for The Founding of New England. He wrote other books such as The March of Democracy,The Living Jefferson,The Adams Family, etc. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 1931 405-page hardcover edition.]

He wrote in the Preface of this 1931 book, “The author … [has] desired to paint a picture, with broad strokes of the brush, of the variegated past which has made our national story, and at the same time to try to discover for himself and others how the ordinary American… has become what he is today in outlook, character, and opinion… He has endeavored … to trace the beginnings … of such American concepts as ‘bigger and better,’ of our attitude toward business, of many characteristics which are generally considered as being ‘typically American,’ and, in especial, of that American dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank which is the greatest contribution we have as yet made to the thought and welfare of the world. That dream or hope has been present from the start… every generation has seen an uprising of the ordinary Americans to save that dream from the forces which appeared to be overwhelming and dispelling it…”

He observes of the nations which established American colonies, “The French dreamed an imperial dream; the Spaniards built an empire.” (Pg. 29) He points out of the early colonists, “Although there was a goodly sprinkling of mere adventurers and ne’er-do-wells, the larger part of the English came with the purpose of establishing homes where they could better their condition either from the point of view of religious conditions or, more frequently, merely in the social or economic scale… If the dreams of the early imperialists had been to create an empire, to singe the beard of the king of Spain and to make shrewd thrust at the Pope, the hope that now dwelt in the breasts of the individual emigrants of all classes was to escape from conditions overseas and to prosper in a new land. They came from prisons, from hovels, from little farm cottages, from town shops, from country manor houses and rectories, but never from palaces. The aristocracy remained in England… These earliest Americans were laborers, tradesmen, artisans, and such… They came to make homes.” (Pg. 31-32)

He notes, “The common man had taken a vast step forward. In the forests of America he had become perhaps a freer individual than he had been at any time in the thousand years since his Anglo-Saxon ancestors had dwelt in the forests of Germany. The English government, because it was itself the freest at that time in the world, had helped along the American tendency by giving the colonies local governments in which the lower houses or assemblies were elected by the people. No such gift was given to the inhabitants of New France under the feudal regime in force there, not to those of New Spain.” (Pg. 36)

He points out, “The type of mind and character developed by all the New England conditions was in marked contrast to that of the South. By force of circumstances, ‘work’ … had early become, as it was to remain, one of the cardinal American virtues. If life was to become something more than a mere scrabble for existence, capital was necessary in New England as well as anywhere else… There was only one way out… every possible profit must be squeezed out of a bargain with fellow citizen or foreigner. As always, the necessity was rationalized…and thrift and shrewdness were added to the list of essential virtues. It became sinful to spend freely, just as it was sinful not to be forever at work, except on the Sabbath; and when the catch of fish … was good, God had smiled on one of his saints.” (Pg. 51-52)

After the Revolutionary War, he comments, “Independence… had been won, and that fact was to be marvelously potent in altering the mind and character of the people. In every colony they had long been accustomed to assert, as far as possible, their own will whenever it might conflict with the instructions of the royal governors or the legislation of Parliament. But now nothing, so it seemed, stood in the way of the way of the complete assertion of that will in any direction they chose… For good or ill there came a release of energies and a rapid development of latent powers… Far more important … was the breaking down of all spiritual barriers to the complete development of whatever might prove to be fertile, true, and lasting in the American dream.” (Pg. 84-85)

He states, “America hoped to become a great nation. Every great nation then in the world was monarchical and aristocratical. America began as a republic and had made a long step toward a democracy… American thinkers had nourished their minds on the great Englishmen, [Algernon] Sidney, [John] Locke, [Thomas] Hobbes, and others. There was nothing novel in their theory. What was wholly novel was the putting of the theory into practice, and THAT they owed to the American wilderness. They did not need to chop off the head of their king. In the process of a steady chopping down of the interminable forest the need of a king had gone.” (Pg. 91)

He suggests, “America would not have become what it did in mind and spirit had we clung to the shores of the Atlantic. For better or worse both, the new America was the child of ‘Ol’ Man river,’ nurtured in the vast domain which had been his through all the ages. It was on frontier after frontier of his vast domain that the American dream could be prolonged until it became part of the very structure of the American mind.” (Pg. 108)

He says, “America even yet clings to the Jeffersonian belief in the common man. This is still an axiom with millions of Americans who have forgotten or never heard of Jefferson’s distinction between ‘common men’ of varying industrial pursuits. But subconsciously that distinction seems to have lingered until within a decade or so, for the American farmer has been considered to be the special repository of the American virtues, in spite of the enormous increase in other classes of toilers.” (Pg. 124-125)

Of the election of Andrew Jackson, he comments, “The common man had believed, and been taught to believe, that it meant a new hope for him, an opening of the door of opportunity for all, a recognition of his rights as a MAN---not simply as an owner of property--- to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He had watched with growing resentment what seemed to him the closing of doors upon him, the rise of privileged classes, and the increasing difficulty or inability for himself to reap profit and benefit from his toil. He feared a leader from a class which he instinctively felt could not or would not sympathize with his own troubles and ideas. He sought a leader of his own sort, and as the West was the heart of this Americanism, it was there that he was found.” (Pg. 157)

He points out, “there had been one factor in American money-making of deep and lasting importance … The speed with which one could get rich in America was due to the immense increase in population growth, and the exploitation of the continent’s unequaled resources. In the old countries there would have been a distinct limit to the expansion of a business or the building of cities. In the Land of Promise there seemed to be none… [Thus] was the new conception of business as somehow a social and patriotic duty… This, combined with the ordinary temptation to make money and the lack of social pleasures and the resources of cultivated society, made the pressure to think in terms of business almost irresistible.” (Pg. 175)

He adds, “We did not love money for its own sake as much as did the Europeans. In accepting the Industrial Revolution, we never brought into being such frightful conditions as ensued in the English manufacturing areas… competition would be unheard-of fierceness, but that was part of the American dream. It was an inevitable corollary of equality of opportunity.” (Pg. 179) He continues, “The American dream---the belief in the value of the common man, and the hope of opening every avenue of opportunity to him---was not a logical concept of thought. Like every great thought that has stirred and advanced humanity, it was a religious emotion, a great act of faith, a courageous leap into the dark unknown.” (Pg. 182)

In the most famous part of the book, he states, “If… the things already listed are all we had had to contribute, America would have made no distinctive and unique gift to mankind. But there has also been the AMERICAN DREAM, the dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement… It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position… the American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtless counted heavily… It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. And that dream has been realized more fully in actual life here than anywhere else, though very imperfectly even among ourselves.” (Pg. 374-375)

He continues, “Lincoln was not great because he was born in a log cabin, but because he got out of it---that is, because he rose above poverty, ignorance, lack of ambition, shiftlessness of character, contentment with mean things and low aims which kept so many thousands in the huts where they were born. If we are to make the dream come true we must all work together, no longer to build bigger, but to build better. There is a time for quantity and a time for quality…. By working together … I mean a genuine individual search and striving for the abiding values of life… The epic loses all its glory without the dream. The statistics of size, population, and wealth would mean nothing to me unless I could still believe in the dream.” (Pg. 381)\

He concludes, “Just as long as wealth and power are our sole badges of success, so long will ambitious men strive to attain them. The prospect is discouraging today, but not hopeless. As we compare America today with the America of 1912 it seems as though we had slipped a long way backwards. But that period is short, after all… There are not a few signs now of promise now in the sky, signs that the peoples themselves are beginning once again to crave something more than is vouchsafed to them in the toils and toys of the mass-production age. They are beginning to realize that, because a man is born with a particular knack for gathering in vast aggregates of money and power for himself, he may not on that account be the wisest leader to follow nor the best fitted to propound a sane philosophy of life. We have a long and arduous road to travel if we are to realize our American dream in the life of our nation, but if we fail, there is nothing left but the old eternal round. The alternative is the failure of self-government, the failure of the common man to rise to full stature, the failure of all that the American dream has held of hope and promise for mankind.” (Pg. 385)

Though written more than 85 years ago, the insights of this books are still enlightening and prescient. For anyone who wants to know more (or just to CELEBRATE!) the American Dream, and the spirit underlying the uniqueness of this country, this book will be absolute “must reading”!

James Truslow Adams (1878-1949) was a freelance American writer and historian; who won the Pulitzer Prize in history for The Founding of New England. He wrote other books such as The March of Democracy,The Living Jefferson,The Adams Family, etc. [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 1931 405-page hardcover edition.]

He wrote in the Preface of this 1931 book, “The author … [has] desired to paint a picture, with broad strokes of the brush, of the variegated past which has made our national story, and at the same time to try to discover for himself and others how the ordinary American… has become what he is today in outlook, character, and opinion… He has endeavored … to trace the beginnings … of such American concepts as ‘bigger and better,’ of our attitude toward business, of many characteristics which are generally considered as being ‘typically American,’ and, in especial, of that American dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank which is the greatest contribution we have as yet made to the thought and welfare of the world. That dream or hope has been present from the start… every generation has seen an uprising of the ordinary Americans to save that dream from the forces which appeared to be overwhelming and dispelling it…”

He observes of the nations which established American colonies, “The French dreamed an imperial dream; the Spaniards built an empire.” (Pg. 29) He points out of the early colonists, “Although there was a goodly sprinkling of mere adventurers and ne’er-do-wells, the larger part of the English came with the purpose of establishing homes where they could better their condition either from the point of view of religious conditions or, more frequently, merely in the social or economic scale… If the dreams of the early imperialists had been to create an empire, to singe the beard of the king of Spain and to make shrewd thrust at the Pope, the hope that now dwelt in the breasts of the individual emigrants of all classes was to escape from conditions overseas and to prosper in a new land. They came from prisons, from hovels, from little farm cottages, from town shops, from country manor houses and rectories, but never from palaces. The aristocracy remained in England… These earliest Americans were laborers, tradesmen, artisans, and such… They came to make homes.” (Pg. 31-32)

He notes, “The common man had taken a vast step forward. In the forests of America he had become perhaps a freer individual than he had been at any time in the thousand years since his Anglo-Saxon ancestors had dwelt in the forests of Germany. The English government, because it was itself the freest at that time in the world, had helped along the American tendency by giving the colonies local governments in which the lower houses or assemblies were elected by the people. No such gift was given to the inhabitants of New France under the feudal regime in force there, not to those of New Spain.” (Pg. 36)

He points out, “The type of mind and character developed by all the New England conditions was in marked contrast to that of the South. By force of circumstances, ‘work’ … had early become, as it was to remain, one of the cardinal American virtues. If life was to become something more than a mere scrabble for existence, capital was necessary in New England as well as anywhere else… There was only one way out… every possible profit must be squeezed out of a bargain with fellow citizen or foreigner. As always, the necessity was rationalized…and thrift and shrewdness were added to the list of essential virtues. It became sinful to spend freely, just as it was sinful not to be forever at work, except on the Sabbath; and when the catch of fish … was good, God had smiled on one of his saints.” (Pg. 51-52)

After the Revolutionary War, he comments, “Independence… had been won, and that fact was to be marvelously potent in altering the mind and character of the people. In every colony they had long been accustomed to assert, as far as possible, their own will whenever it might conflict with the instructions of the royal governors or the legislation of Parliament. But now nothing, so it seemed, stood in the way of the way of the complete assertion of that will in any direction they chose… For good or ill there came a release of energies and a rapid development of latent powers… Far more important … was the breaking down of all spiritual barriers to the complete development of whatever might prove to be fertile, true, and lasting in the American dream.” (Pg. 84-85)

He states, “America hoped to become a great nation. Every great nation then in the world was monarchical and aristocratical. America began as a republic and had made a long step toward a democracy… American thinkers had nourished their minds on the great Englishmen, [Algernon] Sidney, [John] Locke, [Thomas] Hobbes, and others. There was nothing novel in their theory. What was wholly novel was the putting of the theory into practice, and THAT they owed to the American wilderness. They did not need to chop off the head of their king. In the process of a steady chopping down of the interminable forest the need of a king had gone.” (Pg. 91)

He suggests, “America would not have become what it did in mind and spirit had we clung to the shores of the Atlantic. For better or worse both, the new America was the child of ‘Ol’ Man river,’ nurtured in the vast domain which had been his through all the ages. It was on frontier after frontier of his vast domain that the American dream could be prolonged until it became part of the very structure of the American mind.” (Pg. 108)

He says, “America even yet clings to the Jeffersonian belief in the common man. This is still an axiom with millions of Americans who have forgotten or never heard of Jefferson’s distinction between ‘common men’ of varying industrial pursuits. But subconsciously that distinction seems to have lingered until within a decade or so, for the American farmer has been considered to be the special repository of the American virtues, in spite of the enormous increase in other classes of toilers.” (Pg. 124-125)

Of the election of Andrew Jackson, he comments, “The common man had believed, and been taught to believe, that it meant a new hope for him, an opening of the door of opportunity for all, a recognition of his rights as a MAN---not simply as an owner of property--- to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He had watched with growing resentment what seemed to him the closing of doors upon him, the rise of privileged classes, and the increasing difficulty or inability for himself to reap profit and benefit from his toil. He feared a leader from a class which he instinctively felt could not or would not sympathize with his own troubles and ideas. He sought a leader of his own sort, and as the West was the heart of this Americanism, it was there that he was found.” (Pg. 157)

He points out, “there had been one factor in American money-making of deep and lasting importance … The speed with which one could get rich in America was due to the immense increase in population growth, and the exploitation of the continent’s unequaled resources. In the old countries there would have been a distinct limit to the expansion of a business or the building of cities. In the Land of Promise there seemed to be none… [Thus] was the new conception of business as somehow a social and patriotic duty… This, combined with the ordinary temptation to make money and the lack of social pleasures and the resources of cultivated society, made the pressure to think in terms of business almost irresistible.” (Pg. 175)

He adds, “We did not love money for its own sake as much as did the Europeans. In accepting the Industrial Revolution, we never brought into being such frightful conditions as ensued in the English manufacturing areas… competition would be unheard-of fierceness, but that was part of the American dream. It was an inevitable corollary of equality of opportunity.” (Pg. 179) He continues, “The American dream---the belief in the value of the common man, and the hope of opening every avenue of opportunity to him---was not a logical concept of thought. Like every great thought that has stirred and advanced humanity, it was a religious emotion, a great act of faith, a courageous leap into the dark unknown.” (Pg. 182)

In the most famous part of the book, he states, “If… the things already listed are all we had had to contribute, America would have made no distinctive and unique gift to mankind. But there has also been the AMERICAN DREAM, the dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement… It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position… the American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtless counted heavily… It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. And that dream has been realized more fully in actual life here than anywhere else, though very imperfectly even among ourselves.” (Pg. 374-375)

He continues, “Lincoln was not great because he was born in a log cabin, but because he got out of it---that is, because he rose above poverty, ignorance, lack of ambition, shiftlessness of character, contentment with mean things and low aims which kept so many thousands in the huts where they were born. If we are to make the dream come true we must all work together, no longer to build bigger, but to build better. There is a time for quantity and a time for quality…. By working together … I mean a genuine individual search and striving for the abiding values of life… The epic loses all its glory without the dream. The statistics of size, population, and wealth would mean nothing to me unless I could still believe in the dream.” (Pg. 381)\

He concludes, “Just as long as wealth and power are our sole badges of success, so long will ambitious men strive to attain them. The prospect is discouraging today, but not hopeless. As we compare America today with the America of 1912 it seems as though we had slipped a long way backwards. But that period is short, after all… There are not a few signs now of promise now in the sky, signs that the peoples themselves are beginning once again to crave something more than is vouchsafed to them in the toils and toys of the mass-production age. They are beginning to realize that, because a man is born with a particular knack for gathering in vast aggregates of money and power for himself, he may not on that account be the wisest leader to follow nor the best fitted to propound a sane philosophy of life. We have a long and arduous road to travel if we are to realize our American dream in the life of our nation, but if we fail, there is nothing left but the old eternal round. The alternative is the failure of self-government, the failure of the common man to rise to full stature, the failure of all that the American dream has held of hope and promise for mankind.” (Pg. 385)

Though written more than 85 years ago, the insights of this books are still enlightening and prescient. For anyone who wants to know more (or just to CELEBRATE!) the American Dream, and the spirit underlying the uniqueness of this country, this book will be absolute “must reading”!