The Character of America

By Douglas V. Gibbs

From the moment the first settler from England stepped foot on the land of the New World, to the moment the colonies decided to unite against the mightiest empire of the world, the character of America was being forged. The character of America is unique, exceptional, unlike any other in the world. The reason for American character being so unique is because of the unique experience of America throughout history. From the start, Americans were individualistic. From the start, Americans were destined to become something the world had never seen. Independence was inevitable; the character of America demanded it, history foretold it, and pre-revolutionary events ensured it. Colonization by charter, rather than conquest, instilled in the American Colonists the traits of self-sufficiency, self-reliance, hard work, and personal responsibility. The frontier to the west encouraged the Americans to step once again into the unknown, to seek a better life, obtain property, embrace the toughness of the New World, use their guns, take care of themselves, and leave behind the old way of doing things. The treatment of the colonies by the British Empire taught the colonial Americans to not settle for being nothing more than a revenue source for the king. They learned to stand up for their rights, demand liberty, and fight on the side of virtue. The character of America was forged through struggle, economic risk taking, and hardship, developing long before the advent of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. That spirit of American Character continues even in today’s society. It is our character that makes the United States an exceptional nation filled with people who don’t quit.

The riches of the Far East proved to be difficult to obtain. The Portuguese secured a route around the horn of Africa. The Spanish, by supporting Columbus, sought to find a new route to the Orient, across the Pacific Ocean. Somewhere in between, lay a new land. The New World was filled with riches, and Spain was prepared to take it all. Before the English began to colonize the New World, Spain had created an empire spanning the entire New World. Spain obtained this great empire through conquest. Once the Spanish Monarchy had realized that the New World was not the Far East, the ‘
Spanish conquest of the Americas began. However, the Spanish quickly realized that with a great empire built on conquest was attached an expensive price tag for maintaining that empire. Despite frantic activity and considerable promise, Spanish colonies grew slowly. The conquerors were seeking gold and silver. They were not necessarily looking to create a new civilization. Still, as time passed, the Spanish did colonize. Many of them even intermarried with the natives, creating a steep social hierarchy that placed people born in Span at the top of the social status. Eventually, the system got out of control. Abuses by the Spanish Conquistadors against the native peoples made it hard to keep the peace in New Spain, encouraging the Spanish monarchy to change the system in the New World, slowly replacing the oppressive old conquistadors with oppressive royal bureaucrats as the rulers of New Spain. Protecting the massive Spanish Empire from rebelling native populations, attacks against Spanish ships by pirates and privateers, and mutiny by the Spanish soldiers that were seeing their personal influence and power lessen with the arrival of the bureaucrats became so expensive that Spain began to lose even more control of their empire. Spanish influence over their colonies lessened. Some colonies even faced failure. In fact, the Florida colony was on the brink of failure until the 1590s when Franciscans and Jesuits established mission stations there to convert and civilize Indians. Battling European monarchies began to contest Spain’s domination of the New World. As Spain struggled to hold together her empire, other European powers took advantage by launching their own missions of discovery.

English colonists arrived at Jamestown in 1607. Colonization of North America by the English was very different from that of the Spanish. The English watched Spain, and had learned. The lessons from Spain’s tactic of military conquest, and the incredible financial expenses of empire Spain had encountered, convinced the English monarchy to use a different tact when colonizing the Atlantic Coast of North America. Rather than set out to conquer lands with troops and equipment, adventurers were encouraged to invest in the New World. To English colonists, the ownership of property was true wealth, so the opportunity to invest in a new land, where they could own their own property, and become self-sufficient without the iron fist of Britain always on them, was appealing. With that new land in the New World, the English colonists envisioned that they would be able to grow various crops, and make themselves rich in a way the Spanish were never able to achieve. And with the pasage of time, the English did indeed produce crop surpluses for export to the Old World, making the English colonies profitable in a potentially unlimited manner.

In order to expand Britain’s influence around the world, King James I knew he needed to create colonies in the New World. The king did not wish to create yet another high risk, and expensive, system of colonization, as Spain had, so England’s colonization of the New World on the outskirts of Spain’s New World empire (where Spain could not defend the lands she claimed to rule) was encouraged by a system of investment by various companies with ambitions to reap riches, while benefiting England both overseas and at home. These investment opportunities were offered as charters, and rather than a bunch of soldiers coming to colonize as in the case of Spain, England’s colonists would be middle class families and businessmen. The English colonists were not soldiers filled with the desire of conquest and gold, but families filled with the desire of a new start, property ownership, and riches through farming and trade. Investors, like the Virginia Company, risked their capital because they saw great potential for profit in the new colonies. For the monarchy, the system was a proposition Britain felt it could not lose. Britain did not have to put up any money, or effort. All the king needed to do was issue charters. If the colony failed, it cost England nothing, for the loss would be absorbed by the investors. If the colony succeeded, England would benefit through taxation, trade, global influence, and profits from the agriculture of the new land. The struggles were immense. Many colonists died, and the people that survived were sick, hungry, and miserable. The colonists endured Indian attacks, disease, and starvation with little assistance from the British homeland. Faced with the immense difficulties associated with settling in an uncivilized environment, bickering among the colonists left the settlers with unplanted crops, and shrinking food supplies. “The North American wilderness was not quite the paradise described by the Virginia Company’s publications in England. Disease and starvation threatened to wipe out the Jamestown settlement early on. The people lay day and night groaning in misery. The weakened and demoralized people were on the verge of death, on the verge of failure. The local native people came to the rescue. In 1607 the local Indians began to bring corn to the colony for barter, which assisted in feeding the colonists, and stocking the Indians with Old World goods they desired. However, the corn was not enough. By the time 1610 had rolled around, after the “starving time” winter of 1609-1610 where food was in such short supply some settlers resorted to eating their recently deceased neighbors, only 60 of the previous 500 settlers remained alive. These early struggles, however, had an important impact on the English colonies that the Spanish never encountered. The struggles, with no help from England, instilled a spirit of survival, self-reliance, and independence into the English colonists. From the very beginning the virtues of hard work, and personal responsibility, were important for the sake of survival. Without these characteristics, which were taught to the colonists through their struggles, the English colonies would never have survived. Thus began the early development of the character of America.

The Western Frontier’s influence on America’s character added to the spirit of toughness that was fast becoming a common trait among the English colonists. American interest in the frontier enabled them to step out once again into unknown adventures. With that spirit of adventure came the desire to seek a better life, obtain property, battle the difficulties of the untamed land, become skilled with their firearms, and leave behind the old European way of doing things. When George Washington was a young man, he constantly sought adventures on the Virginia Frontier. In March of 1748, when Washington was but a sixteen year old young man, his frequent adventures epitomized the toughness of the American character. On one such venture, “George and his companions swam their horses across swollen rivers, slept under the stars, and feasted on wild turkeys cooked over open campfires, had their tents carried away twice by high winds, and on one occasion awoke to find their straw beds in flames. But through it all they successfully surveyed or ‘ran off’ hundreds of acres along the South Branch”. As the colonies grew, so did the colonist’s encroachment into the Indian frontier. With this kind of life came hunting, fishing, living off the land, and numerous confrontations with the native population. The tough adventurous side of the character of America lends much of its existence to the presence of the wild frontier, and American’s willingness to explore, and conquer, that frontier.

In the New World, the colonists had created for themselves a society that was “distinctively colonial and distinctively British. The emerging political identity of the English colonists was British, so when the king began to revoke various charters in the New World, and when the king began to send British bureaucrats into America, the response was one of anger. Though “chafed under increasing royal control, they still valued English protection”. The rise of various rebel governments challenging the British at the turn of the eighteenth century, however, was only a small sign of things to come.

Originally, the “reason for stationing British troops in America was to maintain the peace between the colonists and the Indians. In 1763 the empire vastly enlarged, and the Americans began to see the British enrich themselves, while exerting more control over the colonists. In search for greater world supremacy, the British exerted themselves upon the colonies. The colonies began to see themselves more carefully guarded, and British law more rigidly administered. The defense of the American colonies, and the administration of the new policies cost Britain heavily. Because of the costs, Englishmen wanted the colonists to assume a fair share of the empire’s expenses. Under the stronger control, the American colonies bucked back, refusing to submit quietly. American merchants continued to trade with the French, and Spanish West Indian islands. This illegal trade was seen as disloyalty to the British Empire, which convinced England that the colonies had drifted too far from the empire for their own, or the mother country’s, own good. To restore the colonies to proper position would necessitate interference with personal liberties. The Americans, accustomed to a history of self-reliance, self-sufficiency, and managing their own affairs, did not take to the new policies lightly. The Americans saw Britain’s new policies as an encroachment on their liberties.

The British Empire had become a tyrannical system that was even willing to use troops against the Americans. The Americans saw the British as rulers that were no longer welcome. The American Revolution was fought against a highly centralized state that was headed by a despotic chief executive. The Americans, due to over a hundred years of building their American character, posed to be a difficult opponent for the British, and did not lay down quietly. The attempt to quell unrest became a war, and that war emerged as a revolution for the independence of the American colonies. The British army considered itself to be an army of skilled professionals who would come in and easily defeat the rank amateurs in short order, putting a quick end to the nonsense. Their approach to victory was the traditional one, pushing the enemy from point to point. They came to fight a war over real estate. The Americans, however, were not your traditional foe. The American’s history of self-reliance, hard work, and experience in the frontier changed the face of the conflict. In the end, the British finally went from America’s shores. The character of America had accomplished the impossible, and was prepared to engage in the next adventure: Nationhood.

Independence was inevitable. America was an exception to the normal European way of doing things. Thomas Paine pointed out that securing independence from England was America’s destiny. If the United States did not achieve independence, the country would never be able to disentangle itself from the family feuds going on in Europe. America’s unique character, which had been constructed in the American psyche from the earliest days when the Americans struggled as new colonists without outside help under the charter system, and from the American taming of the frontier through hardship and struggles, and the harsh treatment the colonies received from Britain, followed by the challenges of war, made independence inevitable. The character of America demanded independence, history foretold independence, and pre-revolutionary events ensured independence. And the American character lives on.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

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