The Essential American Tradition

By George Currie

From the introduction one learns how to manipulate the key to this impressive work, which is a collection of Americana gathered from the Founding Fathers, the patriots of today, and the sacred documents of government past and present — all serving the study of American traditions as they have been set down on paper or uttered from the rostrum.

One finds, in such a book, much which the Minute Men immortalized by Vice President Dawes may have overlooked.

Said Thomas Paine, in 1776:

“We have it in our power to begin the world all over again. A situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months.”

This might be described as the optimistic viewpoint of the American Revolution. Stripped of its oratorical flourish, it means that a new experiment was about to be tried — and the speaker had no doubt of a favorable outcome.

But regard Daniel Webster, in 1814, thundering thus:

“Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take the children and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it?”

Daniel Webster would have been shocked by the draft boards of the World War, but the American people of 1917 were not.
And even about 1850 Walt Whitman was declaring that “Even today, amid these whirls, indeed flippancy and blind fury of infidelity, entire lack of first-class captains and leaders, added to the plentiful meanness and vulgarity of the ostensible masses — the problem, the labor question, beginning to open like a yawning gulf, rapidly widening every year — what prospect have we?”

And Woodrow Wilson, who must eventually be accepted by our children as one of our greatest patriots and wisest of leaders, said to the New York Press Club in 1912:

“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.”

Thus did the American viewpoint progress from the time of Paine. And there are few who find today beneath the unfulfillment of Paine’s great hope the practical fruits of so lofty a conception. We have our front doors and our garages — and the vision of liberty persists.

As a text book for less than 100 percent Americans, The Essential American Tradition seems to scotch his chief contentions. One has little difficulty in noticing that the Founding Fathers, once peace was declared and the Nation began to play the game of practical politics, deplored the same follies that persist today.

So far as the 100 percenters are concerned, it leaves them in no happier condition; it attacks the very reason for their being and in furnishing comfort to the hysterical by the example of history cheats them of their choicest fetishes and arguments. It has been well named The Essential American Tradition.

Of course, the principal purpose of a book such as this is reference; and its completeness is truly remarkable. The introduction — scholarly if somewhat pedantic — reviews the trend of public thought and the effect of the American Revolution, concluding with comprehensive understanding, thus:

“The patriot who imagines his loyalty to be due merely to any such tradition greatly mistakes the abiding glory of his nation. The calamity hoarders of today may consider themselves rebuked. Patriots though they be, they render no great compliment to their country if they think a few outbreaks of irresponsible extremists can unsettle their customs and their lives and their government. This perhaps is the great lesson of the book.”

He fails to see, as the hostile foes of America fail to see, that the value to mankind of what pertains to America is not words or institutions but the passionate desire for individual freedom, for growth, for justice, and for social order which brought so many millions across the sea — a spirit translatable into words and institutions, though not necessarily identical with any form America has yet known.

The fears of Daniel Webster concerning drafting powers of Government failed to materialize any great damage to the Republic in 1917.
And the fears of our penny-dreadful patrioteers or anarchists are not likely to be realized in the future, either.

This is really a book worthy of serious attention and filled with interesting quotations — an anthology of America which is illuminating, sound, and tremendously conservative.
If it hits all extremists, it is only because they have invited rebuke by invoking the words of the Founding Fathers — a rebuttal from the same sources.

Its usefulness to the publicist, educator, research worker, and serious-minded citizen is obvious.

George Currie

George Currie was a journalist and cultural commentator in the early twentieth century whose work appeared in the pages of the The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. He is known for his thoughtful essays on American political tradition and liberty, including “The Essential American Tradition” published on June 21, 1925.

Currie’s writing engaged themes of constitutional government, civic virtue, and the American founding. In “The Essential American Tradition,” he reviewed the anthology compiled by Jesse Lee Bennett (published by George H. Doran Company) and used it as a lens to examine how ideas of liberty, self-government and individual rights persisted and evolved in the national consciousness. The piece combined historical reflection (on figures such as Thomas Paine, Daniel Webster, and Woodrow Wilson) with a warning that the spirit of the Founders must be actively maintained rather than assumed.

Though less widely known today, Currie contributed to the conversation around America’s foundational values during an era of social and political change. His work offers insight into how interwar period journalism linked the founding era’s rhetoric of liberty with contemporary concerns about democracy, power, and national identity.