the political structure, even though the church and the government were to be kept separate. The United States has demonstrated to the Old World for many scores of years that religion can thrive and can permeate the nation without the intervention of government and of a State church. Puritan morality, also, has contributed vitally to American life. Although too rigid, the moral discipline enjoined by Puritanism served to curb the lower human instincts which lead to self indulgences and social enervation. Religious liberty and moral stamina have become outstanding American traits.

It was out of the search for religious freedom by the Pilgrims that there arose in New England in the seventeenth century the demand for a government based on the principles of individual liberty and popular sovereignty. Throughout the succeeding century and in colony after colony, liberty became the dynamic watchword. It reached tangible expression in various ways-strikingly so through the New England town-meeting. Newcoming immigrants served as fresh reserves in building up the spirit of the new Americanism. In the decades following the year 1710, thousands of Ulstermen (or Scotch-Irish) brought a soul-stirring passion for freedom. When the Liberty Bell, symbolizing eighteenth century Americanism, was recast in 1753, it bore a message which proclaimed the earnest and common wish, not only of the people of Philadelphia and of the central colonies, but of all the colonists, namely: "Proclaim liberty throughout all

the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." Liberty became the swelling chord which was to free a people from arbitrary rule.

Then appeared in Virginia the impassioned spokesman of incipient Americanism, Patrick Henry, who gave a larger meaning to the concept of liberty and who united the heart-yearnings of the colonists. In 1765, he uttered a daring public warning to King George to beware of his inordinate desire for political domination. In March, 1775, the delegate from Hanover County arose to speak in a small rural church in the midst of a Virginia wilderness; it was he who was to give the country its watchword, to give it at the critical hour, and to give it brilliantly. With absolute fearlessness, Patrick Henry declared that "war is inevitable," and piercing the misty future he pointed out the basis of ultimate victory, when he asserted that his countrymen "armed in the holy cause of liberty are invincible." With consuming passion, he exclaimed that "life is not so dear, nor peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery." Then, towering in conscious strength-a standardbearer of the Most High-he hurled forth the call to arms, and issued his world-wide and time-long challenge, the unconditional demand: "Give me liberty, or give me death!"

That personification of the spirit of liberty, electrified the old church, leaped the boundaries of

"The fact that the words inscribed upon the Liberty Bell were taken from Leviticus XXV:10, again illustrates the religious interest of the founders of America.

Virginia, sent a thrill through distant Concord and Lexington, vaulted the Atlantic, shook the throne of the British Empire, and won the undying allegiance of LaFayette, Kosciuszko, and patriots everywhere. It drew forth heroes all the way from the plantations of the Carolinas to the sugar-camps of Vermont; it united Massachusetts and Virginia; it gave the inspiration which welded together the heterogeneous colonial pioneers of freedom and laid the foundations for the establishment of the American Union.

In the following year, the democratic and peaceloving pen of Thomas Jefferson formulated in immortal but abstract terms the principles of freedom which Patrick Henry had painted in burning colors. To Jefferson, liberty meant equality before the law of the land; it connoted a freedom which guaranteed to individuals equal redress of wrongs done and equal opportunity to change the laws which define what is right. Concerning his successful attack in the Virginia House of Burgesses upon the operation of the law of primogeniture, Jefferson declared that his purpose was not to further an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit to society, but to encourage the rise of an aristocracy of virtue and talent which nature has wisely and equally scattered throughout all strata and conditions of society.2

Jefferson's Declaration of Independence emphasizes rights, or abstract Right, as being more powerful than harsh, immutable, colossal Might. Might 'John T. Morse, Jr., Thomas Jefferson, p. 39.

which operates so unbrokenly in the physical world, so ruthlessly in nearly all phases of animal life, so barbarously in the world of primitive peoples, so unblushingly among feudal lords and imperial kings, found open and portentous challenge in the Declaration of Independence. Henceforth, Might must bow to Right, autocratic to civil authority, and heartless decrees of inherited pomp to the free exercise of the intelligence of the common people.

The pre-eminent leader in Revolutionary American life was Washington. His name will forever shine as the commander-in-chief of the army of American Independence; his generalship under the most adverse circumstances is beyond comparison. On July 3, 1775, he was the commander-in-chief of an army of about 18,000 men-men who were without guns, equipment, training, organization, esprit de corps. By the winter of 1777-1778, the men whom he had organized into an American army, had suffered heartsickening defeats, had given up several cities, including New York, and had gone into winter quarters at Valley Forge, starving and bleeding. But Washington's noted equipoise of character and his love of independence, supported by liberty-imbued colonists and European friends, finally won the victory for America.

3

The central ideal of Americanism in Revolutionary days was Liberty. It was a liberty which meant the freedom of the American people from interference by any foreign power and which guaranteed the happiness and security of the individual citizen,

D. J. Hill, Americanism: What It Is, p. 15.

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as opposed to the glorification of the nation-state. The life, liberty, and property of the individual, for the first time in the history of the world, were placed under the protection of law, which was to govern the activities of rulers themselves-this was the original contribution of the American mind to political theory.*

In addition to religious and moral liberty, to political liberty, an industrial liberty was introduced by Benjamin Franklin. To the concept of Americanism, Franklin made his unique contribution in the role of "Poor Richard." The teachings of "Poor Richard" have been powerful factors in conditioning the practical every-day ideals of Americans. "They moulded our great-grandparents and their children; they have formed our popular traditions; they still influence our actions, guide our ways of thinking, and establish our points of view, with the constant control of acquired habits which we little suspect. 'Poor Richard' has found eternal life by passing into the daily speech of the people." "Poor Richard" has been pronounced "the revered and popular schoolmaster of a young nation during its period of tutelage." He is the personification of thrift-a self-reliant thrift by which our forefathers laid the foundations of our material welfare, our individual success, and of national prosperity.

The ideals of liberty and of self-reliance are used inseparably in this chapter. If there is a distinction, it exists because liberty has been so frequently used

*Ibid, p. 27.

'John T. Morse, Jr., Benjamin Franklin, p. 22.