AMERICAN CULTURE
An Anthology of Civilization Texts
Edited by
Anders Breidlid, Fredrik Chr. Bregger,
Oyvind T. Gulliksen, Torbjorn Sirevag
London and New York
CONTENTS
List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
xiii
xv
1
1 NATIVE AMERICANS
Introduction
1 Thomas Jefferson
"Confidential Message to Congress" (1803) '
2 Tecumseh
"We All Belong to One Family" (1810)
3 Tecumseh
"Sell a Country? Why Not Sell the Air? " (1810-11)
4 Seattle
FROM "The Dead are Not Powerless" (1854)
5 Helen Hunt Jackson
"A Tale of the Wrongs" (1881)
6 John Collier
"Full Indian Democracy" (1943)
7 Buffy Sainte-Marie
"My Country" (1971)
8 Leslie Silko
"The Man to Send Rain Clouds" (1969)
9 Studs Terkel
FROM "Girl of the Golden West: Ramona Bennett" (1980)
6
7
10
12
13
16
18
20
22
25
2 IMMIGRATION
/
Introduction
10 Emma Lazarus
"The New Colossus" (1883) .
', •'.
11 Henry James
FROM "The Inconceivable Alien" (1883)
34
r
•"
35
36
CONTENTS
12 Owen Wister
FROM "Shall We Let the Cuckoos Crowd Us Out of Our
Nest?" (1921)
13 Madison Grant
"The Mixture of Two Races" (1917)
14 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
"E Pluribus Unum? " (1992)
15 Abraham Cahan
"The Meeting" (1896)
16 OleE. Relvaag
"The Power of Evil in High Places" (1927)
/ 7 Michael Lee Cohen
"David" (1993)
18 Joan Morrison and Charlotte Fox £abusky
FROM "Premier Nguyen Cao Ky: From South Vietnam, 1975"
19 Al Santoli
FROM "Mojados (Wetbacks)" (1988)
38
40
41
42
46
59
62
66
3 AFRICAN AMERICANS
Introduction
20 Moses Grandy
"The Auction Block" (pre-1860)
21 Joseph Ingraham
"A Peep into a Slave-Mart" (pre-1860)
22 Sojourner Truth
"Ain't I a Woman? " (1851)
23 Abraham Lincoln
Final Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
24 William DuBois
FROM "Of the Faith of the Fathers" (1903)
25 William DuBois
"This Double-Consciousness" (1903)
26 Gwendolyn Brooks
"We Real Cool" (1960)
27 Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I Have a Dream" (1963)
28 Malcolm X
FROM "The Ballot or the Bullet" (1965)
29 Malcolm X
"The Black M a n " (1965)
30 US Congress
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
vi
72
73
74
75
76
77
82
84
84
88
89
91
CONTENTS
31 Septima Clark
"Teach How Change Comes About" (pre-1987)
93
4 WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES
Introduction
32 Alexis de Tocqueville
"The Young Woman in the Character of a Wife" (1848)
33 Thomas R. Dew
FROM "Differences between the Sexes" (1835)
34 Seneca Falls Convention
Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848)
35 Kate Chopin
"The Story of an Hour" (1894)
36 Charlotte Perkins Gilman
FROM Women and Economics (1966)
37 Meridel LeSueur
"Women on^the Breadlines" (1932)
38 Betty Friedan
"That Has No Name" (1963)
39 Adrienne Rich
"Think through the Body" (1976)
40 Studs Terkel
"Just a Housewife: Therese Carter" (1972)
41 Merle Woo
FROM "Letter to M a " (1980)
42 National NOW Times (Editorial)
"Abortion Is Not Immoral" (1989)
43 Barbara Newman
FROM "Postmodern Patriarchy Loves Abortion" (1993)
98
100
102
103
105
107
109
115
120
122
126
129
131
5 THE STRUCTURE OF GOVERNMENT
Introduction
44 Founding Fathers
FROM The Constitution of the United States (1787)
45 James Madison
FROM "How a Republic Will Reduce the Evil of Faction"
(1788)
46 E. L. Doctorow
FROM "A Citizen Reads the Constitution" (1987)
47 Thomas Jefferson
FROM "The Roots of Democracy" (1816)
48 John Marshall
FROM Marbury v. Madison (1803)
vii
134
136
144
147
151
153
CONTENTS
49 Andrew Jackson
FROM Proclamation to the People of South Carolina (1832)
50 John Kenneth Galbraith
"The American Presidency: Going the'Way of the
Blacksmith?" (1988)
155
158
6 PARTIES AND POLITICS
Introduction
51 George Washington Plunkitt
FROM "Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft" (1905)
52 Joe McGinnis
FROM The Selling of the President (1969)
53 Studs Terkel
,
C
FROM Interview With Congressman Philip M. Crane (1988)
54 Studs Terkel {
FROM Interview with Ex-Congressman Bob Eckhardt (1988)
55 Hedrick Smith
FROM The Power Game: How Washington Works (1988)
56 The Republican Party
FROM The Republican Party Platform 1992
57 The Democratic Party
FROM
The Democratic Party Platform 1992
162
164
165
167
170
172
175
178
7 ENTERPRISE
Introduction
58 Benjamin Franklin
FROM Autobiography (1785)
59 Francis Grund
FROM "To Americans, Business is Everything" (1837)
60 Andrew Carnegie
FROM The Gospel of Wealth (1900)
61 Bruce Barton
FROM "Christ as a Businessman" (1925)
62 Studs Terkel
Interview with George Allen, Football Coach (1972)
63 Henry Ford
FROM My Life and Work (1922)
64 Andrew Jackson
"The Power of the Moneyed Interests" (1837)
65 Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Organized Money" (1936)
66 Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The Military-Industrial Complex" (1961)
viii
184
187
190
192
194
198
200
203
204
206
CONTENTS
8 CLASS STRUCTURE
Introduction
67 Thomas Jefferson
FROM "Property and Natural Right" (1785)
68 William Graham Sumner
FROM "The Forgotten Man" (1883)
69 Upton Sinclair
FROM The Jungle (1906)
70 Sinclair Lewis
FROM Babbitt (1922)
71 Emily Moore
FROM "Marie Haggerty" (Interview with a Nursemaid, 1939)
72 Studs Terkel
FROM "Mike Lefevre" (Interview with a Steel Mill Worker,
1974)
73 Lyndon B. Johnson
FROM "The War on Poverty" (1964)
74 Steven VanderStaay
FROM "Hell" and "Joe" (1992)
75 Peter Baida
FROM "Confessions of a Reluctant Yuppie" (1985)
9
210
212
213
215
216
219
221
223
224
227
RELIGION,
Introduction
76 Jonathan Edwards
FROM "Personal Narrative" (1739?-l742?)
77 Ralph Waldo Emerson
FROM "The Manifesto of 1838"
232
234
238
78 James Cardinal Gibbons
FROM "The Catholic Church and Labor" (1887)
79 WillHerberg
"The Religion of Americans" (1955)
80 Anonymous
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Go Down, Moses"
(pre-1860)
81 Billy Graham
"The Unfinished Dream" (1970)
82 Pat Robertson
FROM "The New World Order" (1992)
IX
241
245
250
251
255
CONTENTS
10 EDUCATION
Introduction
83 Robert Coram
"The Necessity of Compulsory Primary Education"
(1791)
84 John Dewey
"My Pedagogic Creed" (1897)
85 US Supreme Court
The 1954 Supreme Court Decision on Segregation
86 US Congressmen
"Protest from the South" (1956)
87 Jonathan Kozol
264
FROM
"The Grim Reality of Ghetto Schools" (1967)
88 Peter Schrag
"Savage Equalities: The Case Against Jonathan Kozol"
(1991)
V
89 Allan Bloom
"The Closing of the American Mind" (1987)
90 Elizabeth Loza Newby
FROM "An Impossible Dream" (1977)
91 Studs Terkel
FROM
"Public School Teacher: Rose Hoffman" (1972)
266
269
273
275
277
279
282
287
290
11 MASS MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE
Introduction
92 New York Herald
Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853)
93 Bessie Smith
"Empty Bed Blues" (1920s?)
94 Woodie Guthrie
"This Land is Your Land" (1944)
95 Mikal Gilmore
FROM "Bruce Springsteen" (1987)
96 Studs Terkel
FROM "Jill Robertson: Fantasia" (1982)
97 Stanley Kauffmann
"Little Big Man" (1970)
98 Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader and Robert de Niro
FROM " Taxi Driver" (1992)
99 Neil Postman
FROM "The Age of Show Business" (1985)
296
298
301
302
302
309
313
315
318
CONTENTS
12 THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD
Introduction
100 George Washington
FROM Farewell Address (1796)
101 James Monroe
FROM "The Monroe Doctrine" (1823)
102 Charles A. Beard
FROM "The Case for Isolation" (1940)
103 Harry Truman
"The Truman Doctrine" (1947)
104 George C. Marshall \
"The Marshall Plan\(1947)
105 Joseph McCarthy
FROM "The Wheeling Speech" (1950)
106 John F Kennedy
First Inaugural Address (1961)
107 Lyndon B. Johnson
"American Policy in Viet-nam" (1965)
108 George Bush
"The Launch of Attack on Iraq" (1991)
109 E. L. Doctorow
Open Letter to the President (1991)
324
327
329
332
335
337
339
345
349
351
355
13 IDEOLOGY: DOMINANT BELIEFS AND VALUES
Introduction
110 Thomas Jefferson, with Amendments by the Continental Congress
FROM The Declaration of Independence (1776)
111 Abraham Lincoln
The Gettysburg Address (1863)
112 John Marshall Harlan
FROM Dissenting Opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
113 Learned Hand
FROM "The Spirit of Liberty" (1944)
114 William James
FROM Pragmatism (1907)
115 Jane Addams
FROM Twenty Years at Hull House (1910)
116 Woodrow Wilson
FROM First Inaugural Address (1913)
117 William J. Clinton
FROM Address
on the State of the Union, 1994
xi
361
364
367
368
369
370
371
373
375
CONTENTS
118 Frederick Jackson Turner
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
FROM "The Significance of the Frontier in American
History" (1893)
Theodore Roosevelt
FROM "The Strenuous Life" (1899)
Studs Terkel
FROM "Jay Slabaugh, 4 8 " (Interview with a Corporate
Executive, 1980)
Ronald Reagan
FROM Address on the State of the Union, 1986
Rush H. Limbaugh,III
FROM See, I Told You So (1993)
Earnest Elmo Calkins^^
FROM "Business Has Wings" (1927)
Dale Carnegie
FROM How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936)
Malvina Reynolds
"Little Boxes" (1962)
David Watson
376
377
378
379
380
382
385
386
"Civilization is Like a Jetliner" (1983)
387
Sources
Suggested further reading
389
399
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