Kohn on America: It's all about the idea

In the final parts of Kohn's look at America as nascent nation, he concentrates on major matters for nationhood. Things like education, language and literature. Neatly summed up, it comes down to the fact that there were many people like Noah Webster.

Webster believed that America's best bet was to strike out anew - to create its own language (to Webster, curiously, American English was enough), education system, and literature. When a proponent of something accurately predicts the state of a whole language for the next century, it's fair to say that he can be agreed with.

But, people like Webster faced plenty of opposition from conservative corners in the early years of the union and gradually those who were still concerned about Europe entered the fray. The first decades of the nineteenth century were host to Napoleon and his conquests after all. Kohn mentions nothing about an American fear that they would be next, rather that Americans bristled at the idea of Europe coming under one power, but I imagine there was a mix of the two sentiments at work.

Kohn closes the chapter with further mention of Jefferson and his singular belief in non-denominational agrarian societies. On the former of these two aspects, Kohn gives some attention to where religion stood in early US policy.

This attention is enough to turn up a 1796 treaty between the US and Tripoli that included the statement: "As the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion" (312). Kohn is quick to note that this treaty was ratified by the senate without controversy.

Ultimately, though, as Kohn reminds us all, it was the idea of America - this new found land where a person's name or status had no meaning, and where there was no precedent for European governance - that drew people together. And throughout its early years, this is what people believed in, fought for, and kept ever at the fore of their minds.

Thus ends Kohn's study of newborn nationhood. Up next appears to be a look at how folklore helped old countries to find a new sense of national identity. It's a bit of a strange set up, the sequence of chapters being vaguely chronological, but I appreciate the variety that it offers. The geographical jumps that Kohn makes keep things relatively fresh.