Americans had achieved independence from Great British control, but American’s still had to create their own national identity. For a new nation to be function, they must redefine who America is as a nation. Intellectual leaders pushed for Americans to express their patriotic spirit and create an American national character. Their goal was to remove British attitudes and manners. Many intellectuals wrote about America’s identity, including Noah Webster, George Washington, Mercy Warren, Judith Murray, and many more.
Noah Webster was one of the intellectuals of the new nation who envisioned American progress and identity. Noah Webster insisted on Americans to ‘Unshackle your minds and act like independent beings.” Webster stated that ‘our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in language as well as the government. Great Britain … should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers is already corrupted, and her language on the decline.’ Webster completed the dictionary in 1825, and since then no one has created a significant dictionary. His impressive dictionary included 70,000 words, definitions, and where the word comes from. With Webster’s dictionary, it symbolized a unified national language, and it helped America create its own identity.
Mercy Otis Warren wrote History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution in 1805. She decided, with enthusiastic support from John Adams, to write a history of the American Revolution. When Mercy’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution was finally published, President Thomas Jefferson ordered advance copies for everyone in his cabinet and himself. She used this opportunity to distinguish the moral self-sacrifice of the revolutionaries with what she saw as peacetime in revolutionary principles. In Mercy’s plays, she placed women in the heart of political confusion. Though she didn’t support political rights for women, she did not help women separate themselves from politics entirely. With her characters in the plays, she suggested that a stable republic requires politically informed women prepared to make sacrifices for the common good. Because of her writings, Mercy showed that all women could assist all citizens in action.
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In David Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution, 1789, told the story of how virtuous ‘husbandmen, merchants, mechanics, and fishermen’ won independence from the corrupt British. He saw the Revolution as a democratic disaster brought on by Britain’s imperial interests and the colonists’ experience in self-government. The intellectual David Ramsay was one of the first to attempt to connect America in a historical document and had to create ‘the American Colonist’ who was supposed to represent the American identity because he ‘was a strong, independent, white, male Republican, unmarked by that debilitating slave system.’
Likewise, intellectuals like Mercy Otis Warren and David Ramsay did not quite agree on what the American identity was. Ramsay focused on the diversity of the colonies and the unity of Americans (patriots and loyalists), which is why he created the American Colonist, while Warren did not pay any heed to those issues and instead focused on the ‘virtue and love of liberty’ that Americans went through when fighting the tyrannical British. This can be seen in the description of the British that each one uses. Ramsay is passive and says that ‘the inhabitants of the British Colonies were universally loyal’ and could not ‘breakthrough all former attachments.” However, Warren uses a Revolutionary tone by saying that ‘the inhabitants of the town of Boston had suffered almost every species of insult from the British soldiery’ These differences in perspectives did not permit a simple definition of what the American identity was and instead created a divergent illusion of the American national identity.
Lastly, many early scholars had different opinions as to what defined the American Revolution and its culture. This can be seen in the various paintings of John Trumbull and Charles Willson Peale. In Trumbull’s painting of The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill shows the raw union of citizen-soldiers or the militia going to battle against the organized British troops, and shows the heroism of these average men fighting for their nation. On the other hand, Peale’s painting George Washington at the Battle of Princeton the dignified and prestigious George Washington is shown entirely in his uniform and represents the confidence and ability to win a battle through one man. This shows the differences in what led America to its great victory, the valiant sacrifices of commoners versus the cunning strategy of a leader.
In essence, the American identity through historical documents had arduous beginnings. The diversity of the colonies promoted a barrier between them that looked only at one’s own colony instead of America as a whole nation. It was caused by the influx of different immigrants and traditions of the economy in each colony as opposed to another and proved to be a difficult task for any scholar to create a connection. Lastly, the different opinions of what brought American success in the Revolution and what defined the national identity was cause for debate between these perspectives. The narration of the nationhood of America faced many obstacles in proving the unified national identity in the thirteen colonies.
Praying to god, I ain’t no fool
Without god you just a little molecule
Waiting to know my plan
God is my handyman
He shows me through my rainy day
And He reminds me to pray
Works Cited
- “George Washington after the Battle of Princeton (PP218).” Princeton University, The Trustees of Princeton University, artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/45234.
- “Mercy Otis Warren, Historian of the Revolution.” History Is Fun, 13 Aug. 2014, www.historyisfun.org/blog/mercy-otis-warren/.
- “Noah Webster and the Dream of a Common Language: Connecticut History: a CTHumanities Project.” Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project, connecticuthistory.org/noah-webster-and-the-dream-of-a-common-language/.
- “Online Library of Liberty.” The History of the American Revolution, Vol. 1 – Online Library of Liberty, oll.libertyfund.org/titles/ramsay-the-history-of-the-american-revolution-vol-1.
- Trumbull, John. “The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775, 1786 – John Trumbull.” Www.wikiart.org, 1 Jan. 1786, www.wikiart.org/en/john-trumbull/the-death-of-general-warren-at-the-battle-of-bunker-s-hill-june-17-1775-1786.
