The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation

In the absence of other universal bases of identity like shared history, religion, and lineage that exist in comparatively homogenous nations like Japan, the American Dream “seems like the most lofty as well as the most immediate component of an American identity, a birthright far more meaningful and compelling than terms like ‘democracy,’ ‘Constitution,’ or even ‘the United States’ (5). This idea-based identity is ambiguous and isn’t subject to proof in the same way as other identifiers, which contributes to the American Dream’s mystique and its tensions, including the variety of definitions of the Dream throughout history and between different social groups. Despite these contentions, human agency, or “the idea that individuals have control over the course of their lives” (10), is the critical through line joining all definitions of the American Dream.

The willingness to start all over and take one’s destiny in one’s own hands to create a better life for one’s children is the hallmark of the Puritan experience and, more broadly, the American Dream. Implicit in this concept is the importance of human agency or freedom, another hallmark of the Dream. The Dream obviously wasn’t accessible to all people living on the North American continent since the arrival of the Puritans—that is, it wasn’t accessible to women, African slaves, and First Nations people in the way that it was to many white men. During times of crisis in the early history of the colonies, women were easy scapegoats, like during the Salem Witch Trials or the Antinomian religious crisis, which banished Anne Hutchinson from her community after a blasphemy trial. Wars with First Nations groups over land were common, although Cullen indicates that the Puritans’ “much-lamented relations with Indians weren’t all that bad” (29). Although African slaves enabled white European settlers to achieve their own American dreams, it’s ridiculous to imagine that slaves had comparable access to the Dream during the 17th century in the American colonies.

The anxiety associated with the Puritan religion was extreme. The theological compromises of some Puritans are understandable given the psychological duress associated with the real fear of hellfire coupled with no surefire way to guarantee salvation. Preparationism, a method of indicating to oneself that one is on the right path to salvation, would have been an enormous relief to many Puritans. Max Weber in his Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which Cullen references in this book, argues that the Protestant work ethic (born of preparationism and Puritans’ need for a tangible way to know that they could be saved from Hell by carrying out regular good works in this world) was crucial for the development of capitalism. This point of view is at odds with competing theories of history like Marxism.