Wednesday, February 24, 1999

Announcements: No Class on Monday, March 1st, 1999

Lecture notes:
    "We Americans are driven to a rejection of the maxims of the past, seeing that, ere long, the van of the nation must, of right,
belong to ourselves....  We Americans are the peculiar chosen peole...the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties
of the world.  Seventy years ago we escaped from thrall; and...God has given us, for a future inheritance, the broad domains of the political pagan, that shall yet come and lie down under the shade of our ark, without bloody hands being lifted.  God has
predestinated, mankind expects, great things of our race; and great things we feel in our souls."
                                                Herman Melville, White Jacket

Points of Crevecoeur
From Letters from an American Farmer
Trying to define what an American is for the Europeans (combining myth and reality)

• American "Adam"
• Western Pilgrims
• Religious "Indifference"
• "Men are like Plants"
• Charleston/Slavery

• Who is an american??? => A new man
• Forget the past and create a new life

• Americans
• Mission is changed from religious freedom to becoming farmers
• Will will be the first ones to circle the globe completely
• Civilize areas that are uncivilized
• Religion is no longer emphasized

• Gone from being the Holy Ark to being the Ark of Liberties
• Religions seem to dissipate across America because of the open space, unlike Europe, where there is no space to dissipate

• Describing the three different types of Americans and how the land has shaped their character

• Eastern Seaboard

• Middle Way

• Frontier Society