Ethnically, the
only real Americans are the Indian descendants of the aboriginal
races. But it is futile to combat universal usage: the World War has
clinched the name upon the inhabitants of the United States. The
American army, the American navy, American physicians and nurses,
American food and clothing--these are phrases with a definite
geographical and ethnic meaning which neither academic ingenuity nor
race rivalry can erase from the memory of mankind.
This chapter, however, is to discuss the American stock, and it is
necessary to look farther back than mere citizenship; for there are
millions of American citizens of foreign birth or parentage who,
though they are Americans, are clearly not of any American stock.
At the time of the Revolution there was a definite American
population, knit together by over two centuries of toil in the hard
school of frontier life, inspired by common political purposes,
speaking one language, worshiping one God in divers manners,
acknowledging one sovereignty, and complying with the mandates of one
common law. Through their common experience in subduing the wilderness
and in wresting their independence from an obstinate and stupid
monarch, the English colonies became a nation. Though they did not
fulfill Raleigh's hope and become an English nation, they were much
more English than non-English, and these Revolutionary Americans may
be called today, without abuse of the term, the original American
stock.
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