I’ve been working for most of the day on a syllabus for the AP American History class that I’m teaching for a group of homeschooled high schoolers next year. I’m tired of working on it, so I have a question. What do you all think are the most significant events, people, or movements in U.S. history? I think I read in an interview once that Ken Burns thought the Civil War defined us as a people. He also made PBS series on jazz music and on baseball because he thought those were characteristically American inventions. If you were a film maker or an author, what or whom would you feature in your work as key to what makes us truly American? I have several thoughts. Immigration, perhaps? Our unique, sometimes rocky, relationship with Europe and Western culture? The whole Westward movement? Protestant individualistic Christianity?
As for people, who is the quintessential American? Benjamin Franklin? I think he was too fond of the French and spent too much time in France pretending to be an American. George Washington? Too remote and aristocratic. Abraham Lincoln? Maybe. The log cabin to president, rags to riches, theme is very American.
What do you think?
I’ve been thinking about your questions all day and I’m embarassed that I can’t come up with some wise and witty response.
So much of my opinion is based on my own personal experience. I am descended from poor pioneers seeking land and a better life, mainly German immigrants. I am also living where the civil war is thought to have started.
The rugged individualist thinking started with the pilgrims and continued with pioneers. That’s what I see inluencing our culture in this part of the country.
We value independence and wide-open spaces. It’s very different from other cultures that I am aware of. Maybe because these are the types of people who choose to leave home and family to come to a new country.
Interesting question…what events or people define us ‘Americans’? Oddly, for different reasons, I have pondered the same question myself recently…looking for patterns in American culture that define us historically in the eyes of the rest of the world. Allow me a brief rambling: My family included a number of pioneers in the 1700’s and my research on some of those individuals included historical accounts of an attack by native american indians on the family, settling an area in eastern Kentucky. Nothing was mentioned in the article of the plight of the indians involved or what may have provoked the attack. The colonization and expansion of ‘civilization’ on american soil includes many patterns that we, as contemporary americans, should not be proud of. I wonder if that pattern of cultural dominance over other people will be our historical legacy. We somehow view our ‘rights’ as being what the ‘rights of others’ should be and in doing so force an ethnocentricity upon others that may or may not be appropriate. I wonder if we are repeating this pattern in Iraq? Were we attempting to do the same thing in Viet Nam? I remember reading The Ugly American many years back and recognizing that some of the pride that I have as being an american is perceived as arrogance in other parts of the world. My fear is that our historical legacy, from the earliest treatment of native american indigenous people to what we are curretly doing as a matter of foreign policy will be a rather ugly blot on what we as americans often view as a proud heritage. Granted, there are many, many benevolent patterns that apprear throughout our history for which we should be proud… but there are core human rights failures in our own history that should not be glossed over. Food for though, at least…