We Are All Americans, Pure and Simple: Theodore Roosevelt and the Myth of Americanism
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We Are All Americans, Pure and Simple: Theodore Roosevelt and the Myth of Americanism
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| ISBN-13: | 9780817387310 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 10/15/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 232 |
| File size: | 845 KB |
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We Are All Americans, Pure and Simple
Theodore Roosevelt and the Myth of Americanism
By Leroy G. Dorsey
The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 2007 The University of Alabama PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-8731-0
CHAPTER 1
Roosevelt's Americanism and the Myth of Origin
One of the most persistent questions in U.S. history has been, "What does it mean to be an American?" The answer in the early days of the Republic appeared deceptively simple: Americans were people who believed in "Americanism." Americanism constituted the political and practical commitment an individual made to the moral values, democratic principles, and social norms identified with America. Believers in Americanism were thought to embrace ideals such as freedom, liberty, rule of law, democracy, and love for their unique country. The means white Americans employed to ensure that racial and ethnic "others" embraced those beliefs functionally excluded those others from participation.
To promote Americanism, politicians, educators, and nativists instituted the practices of "assimilation" and "Americanization." These advocates called for the assimilation of Native Americans, while excluding other nonwhite groups such as Asians and African Americans; likewise, whites wanted immigrants Americanized. Both terms would eventually become synonymous in the early 1900s since they both involved how to motivate "outsiders" to embrace the practices and institutions of white culture, becoming one people ideologically in the process. Both terms, unfortunately, would also revolve around the notion of coercing a person, many times forcibly, to discard his or her birth culture. Thus, whites used the principles of Americanism to convince nonwhites and immigrants to believe in something greater than their supposed backward cultures, and employed the practices of assimilation and Americanization to control the outsiders' behavior within the nation.
Attempts at extermination and removal in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not solve what many at the time considered "the Indian problem." As a result, advocates such as Thomas Jefferson called for the assimilation of Native Americans by forcing them to reject their nomadic hunting culture and become farmers. Whites acquired Native Americans' land and then distributed it back to them in the form of small homesteading plots. Along with compulsory education in agriculture, Christianity, and social studies, Americans waged a war in the classroom against Native Americans that was no less destructive than what they did on the battlefield. According to Stephen Cornell, the program of civilization and assimilation downplayed the "disturbing specter of the United States, founded on principles of freedom and equality, setting out to destroy Indian nations for the sake of real estate." Assimilation forced unwilling Native Americans to engage in an unwanted and bastardized version of Americanism's promise to life and liberty.
Many immigrants fared no better under Americanization. From the beginning of the Republic, political leaders spoke of the need for immigrants to discard their Old World clothing, religions, languages, ideologies, customs, and allegiances in order to become Americans. While lawmakers controlled entrance to the country and citizenship through various acts, and some public organizations worked to Americanize immigrants through education, there was no systematic national mechanism to transform newcomers prior to the twentieth century. Whites generally presumed the process of Americanization would occur on its own.
Israel Zangwill's The Melting Pot brought this presumption to the nation's attention. His play opened to enthusiastic reviews in Washington, D.C., in October 1908. Theodore Roosevelt attended opening night and hailed Zangwill's message. The play related the story of David, a Jewish immigrant who came to America to escape the Russian pogrom that had killed his family. Living in New York, David found the American Dream: opportunity, hard work, and success. More important, perhaps, David found a spirit of racial and ethnic equality forged in America, a point he stressed in the play's finale: "There she lies, the great Melting Pot.... There gapes her mouth—the harbour where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour in their human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian ... black and yellow ... how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God.... What is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward!" For many people, the play affirmed the notion of automatic assimilation; no matter how it happened, immigrants would thankfully realize the benefit of being absorbed into the American body. The Melting Pot symbolized the nation as a place where race or ethnicity did not matter in regard to acceptance, social mobility, and the realization of the American Dream.
Yet, the play also troubled many people. The popularization of the "melting pot" idea dramatized a sense of confusion about its relationship to Americanism. Philip Gleason observed that after Zangwill's play, some Americans worried about the meaning of "melting together." Did the forging of America refer to the creation of an American/immigrant hybrid, or did the melting pot "strip [immigrants] of their cultural heritage, and make old-style, Anglo-Saxon Americans of them?" Concerned nativists worried if Americanization meant marriage between whites and "inferior" immigrant groups, or if the nature of Americanism itself changed with the addition of "foreign" ways of thinking. These confusions pointed to a realization: whites, up until Zangwill's play, had presumed Americanization was a largely natural process, one that immigrants would gladly will for themselves. However, with increasing numbers of immigrants seemingly holding on to their Old World cultures, whites decided to take control of the process and systematically force aliens into conformance with American values. Just like assimilation, Americanization gave whites control of and access to the benefits of national identity.
With the fear of foreigners refusing to accept Americanism, the Americanization Movement was born. Businesses, private organizations, schools, and all levels of government participated in an organized crusade to Americanize immigrants. Political and public organizations instituted compulsory English education, established neighborhood counseling sessions to help foreigners understand the meaning of Americanism, and churches persuaded immigrants to reject their heritages. Public schools in particular led the way in proselytizing Americanism. Educators redesigned curricula to socialize immigrant children, to instill loyalty for their new nation, and to inculcate in them Protestant beliefs. The popularity of Americanization also led to a more consistent understanding of the "melting pot" symbol: by the end of World War One, Gleason concluded, the "melting pot came to be looked upon as almost exclusively a purger of 'foreign dross' and 'impurities.'" This understanding would also lead many Anglo-Saxons to engage in wholesale outrages against those immigrants who seemed to resist the need to reject their "impurities."
The assimilation and Americanization of immigrants and nonwhites contradicted the idyllic character of American identity. First, the philosophic appeal of Americanism—loving your country for allowing you to live a life of democratic harmony with all others—obscured the fact that whites acted as gatekeepers to limit access to this life based on erroneous beliefs about racial and ethnic inferiorities. Second, assimilation and Americanization acted as clubs to coerce cooperation in nonwhites and foreigners, ordering them to self-identify only with their new country by both legal and extralegal means. Third, assimilation and Americanization emphasized the stark differences between various groups without providing them a way to view their individuality within the larger community.
Roosevelt would generally agree with the goals promoted by advocates of Americanism, assimilation, and Americanization. He too believed in the necessity of new citizens loving their God-blessed, democratic nation, as well as the need for them to discard much of the trappings of their old lives. One of his first published utterances of the term "Americanism" appeared in the preface of his narrative history called New York, published in 1891. He asserted that New Yorkers of foreign descent represented prototypical Americans. Many of them had learned the lessons of Americanism: they had recognized that the person "who wishes to win honor" and to "play his part honestly and manfully, must be indeed an American in spirit and purpose, in heart and thought and deed." Such behavior, he offered, proved that these new Americans understood "the lesson of Americanism" by embracing a "devotion to the welfare of the commonwealth."
Roosevelt's message stayed consistent throughout his life. Speaking before a St. Louis audience in 1916, he reiterated his egalitarian policy. He seemingly cared little about where someone originated. "If the American has the right stuff in him," he stated, "I care not a snap of my fingers whether he is Jew or Gentile.... I care not a snap of my fingers whether his ancestors came over in the Mayflower, or [born] in Germany, Ireland, France, England, Scandinavia, Russia or Italy or any other country." As long as each person proved "physically and intellectually fit, of sound character, and eager in good faith to become an American citizen," he declared, "I am for him." Roosevelt's articulation of Americanism appeared consistent with the common understanding of the belief. When he called on citizens to be "American in spirit and purpose," he affirmed Americanism as a belief in national ideals. He informed newcomers of their responsibilities to the nation and the benefits they derived from acceptance of those responsibilities. Roosevelt also reminded his audiences of the ideal notion that place of origin should not determine the validity for citizenship. Moreover, through some process, racial and ethnic others would assimilate and be Americanized. In many ways, his Americanism reflected and built on the familiar conception of the term.
Yet, Roosevelt actually recast the meaning of Americanism, narrowing it in the process to three essential elements. First, he deemed physical or martial hardiness integral to any understanding of American success. To "play" an American, to live the democratic ideals of the nation, one needed a manly vitality. Second, he offered moral character as a key ingredient for the American citizen; ideal virtue was needed to guide an individual's political, business, and social relationships with others. Finally, while the traditional perception of Americanism included equality, Roosevelt privileged it above all other values and reinterpreted its meaning. If racial and ethnic others aided the community with their strength and character, they deserved "some" level of equal respect from their white fellow countrymen. Immigrants and nonwhites could earn equality and find "some" room in the nation's identity. These three tenets of his Americanism—strength, integrity, and earned equality—became a staple in Roosevelt's rhetoric throughout his career.
Whereas nativists employed assimilation and Americanization to force immigrants and nonwhites to accept Americanism, a force many of those people resisted and rejected, Roosevelt offered a significant rhetorical alternative. By combining the philosophical appeal of national values with the practical tenets of strength, integrity, and earned equality, his Americanism contained the prescription for outsiders to bring about their own transformation into Americans. Roosevelt looked to the individual to change, to demonstrate his or her individual ability to succeed, which would then benefit the group. He affirmed on more than one occasion, "As it is with the individual, so it is with the nation." If foreigners and nonwhites worked to make themselves both physically and morally strong, Roosevelt argued, and then turned such strength to aiding the community, they fulfilled their civic duty. As a result, they deserved some level of respect equal to whites. Through these processes, racial and ethnic outsiders could seemingly enter national identity unmolested, although whites would still be the judges of how well foreigners and nonwhites fulfilled those criteria.
So, on the one hand, racial and ethnic others could conceivably affect their own entrance into the nation's identity. On the other hand, whites could still work to deny access to anyone they deemed inferior. Roosevelt's rhetorical lessons acknowledged both ends of that continuum, but offered his Americanism as the moderate position between them.
Roosevelt and Modern America
Roosevelt's development of what he considered the foundation of national identity gave citizens an understanding of Americanism through which they couldnegotiate the extreme positions that divided the nation. Chief among those foundational elements was physical vigor.
Strength of the Body
Roosevelt's belief in bodily strength developed during his childhood, an inspiring tale now bordering on the legendary. Born in 1858 with severe asthma, Roosevelt's resulting physical frailty made him a target as he grew into adolescence. As he wrote in his autobiography, "I was at first quite unable to hold my own when thrown into contact with other boys of rougher antecedents." He shared what he considered a pivotal moment that occurred when he was fourteen years old—a rough-housing encounter with two boys that demonstrated the indignity of weakness: "either one singly could not only handle me with easy contempt, but handle me so as not to hurt me much and yet to prevent my doing any damage whatever in return." Spurred by the practical need to protect himself, as well as energized by the stories his mother told him about the southern traditions of manliness, young Roosevelt embarked upon a rigorous training regimen—including boxing, wrestling, horseback riding, and hunting. This training compensated for his lack of natural prowess.
Throughout his life, Roosevelt gravitated to pursuits that tested his manliness. He served in the National Guard, established cattle ranches, served as the assistant secretary of the navy, fought in the Spanish-American War, and trekked the world over in search of adventure. More important, he frequently used his positions to appear in public to promote Americanism and its link to physical vitality. For example, speaking as the police commissioner before the Liberal Club in 1895, Roosevelt delivered the speech "Americanism in Municipal Politics." He argued civic leaders needed a courage borne by strength of arms. "I can get along with him [the scoundrel]. He will hit me and I will hit him." But an honesty weakened by timidity served no one, and those men who demonstrated such a "delicate [touch]" were unworthy of their status as leaders or Americans. For Roosevelt, politics appeared no different from any other physical struggle, and leaders unable to meet such a tangible challenge proved their weakness and brought into question their right to be called Americans. As the nineteenth century ended, two critical events help to explain Roosevelt's worry that a lack of manly vitality signaled America's decline.
The first event that interested Roosevelt involved a paper read at the American Historical Association in 1893. "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," written and presented by a young historian named Frederick Jackson Turner, challenged the prevailing historical thought. Turner did not affirm the conclusions of traditional historians who argued that the characteristics andinstitutions of America came unchanged from the Old World. Instead, he proposed that the frontier experiences of settlers in the wilderness of the North American continent had transformed them into something uniquely American. In fact, Turner argued the frontier shaped the essence of the nation's identity: "That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom-these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier." His thesis provided a fundamental and attractive explanation of America's origin. It provided citizens with an appealing image—that of dynamic, strong, reasoned, and uniquely capable people who had dominated their surroundings through their strength of body, mind, and character.
Turner's essay, however, ended on an ominous note. Three years earlier in 1890, he observed, the superintendent of the census declared the frontier officially closed. With this revelation, Turner implied that the forge used to make America was no more. "And now, four centuries from the discovery of America," he wrote, "at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history." He posed a simple yet perplexing conundrum in the late 1800s: if America's material prosperity and democracy stemmed from its frontier experience, what would be the country's future without such experiences? Over the next few years, politicians and other public advocates predicted an end to American prosperity, citing the numerous economic depressions of the time as extensions of the frontier's end. Likewise, these doomsayers used the close of the frontier to call for an end to immigration. They argued that without the frontier to transform foreigners into Americans, the nation risked its resources on the worst elements from the Old World.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from We Are All Americans, Pure and Simple by Leroy G. Dorsey. Copyright © 2007 The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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Table of Contents
Preface ixAcknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. Roosevelt’s Americanism and the Myth of Origin 14
2. Forging Americanism on the Frontier: Immigrants and The Winning of the West 46
3. Red into White: Native Americans and Americanism 69
4. Shaping the African American Image: Americanism and the “Negro Problem” 93
5. From Hero to Traitor to Good Citizen: Americanism and the Campaign against the Hyphen 117
Conclusion 139
Notes 149
Bibliographic Essay 183
Bibliography 203
Index 217