American ideals, and other essays, social and politicalRoosevelt, Theodore
General
American ideals, and other essays, social and political
Roosevelt, Theodore
National characteristics, American; United States -- Politics and government; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
The immigrant of to-day can learn much from the experience of the
immigrants of the past, who came to America prior to the Revolutionary
War. We were then already, what we are now, a people of mixed blood.
Many of our most illustrious Revolutionary names were borne by men
of Huguenot blood--Jay, Sevier, Marion, Laurens. But the Huguenots
were, on the whole, the best immigrants we have ever received; sooner
than any other, and more completely, they became American in speech,
conviction, and thought. The Hollanders took longer than the Huguenots
to become completely assimilated; nevertheless they in the end became
so, immensely to their own advantage. One of the leading Revolutionary
generals, Schuyler, and one of the Presidents of the United States,
Van Buren, were of Dutch blood; but they rose to their positions,
the highest in the land, because they had become Americans and had
ceased being Hollanders. If they had remained members of an alien
body, cut off by their speech and customs and belief from the rest
of the American community, Schuyler would have lived his life as a
boorish, provincial squire, and Van Buren would have ended his days
a small tavern-keeper. So it is with the Germans of Pennsylvania.
Those of them who became Americanized have furnished to our history
a multitude of honorable names, from the days of the Mühlenbergs
onward; but those who did not become Americanized form to the present
day an unimportant body, of no significance in American existence.
So it is with the Irish, who gave to Revolutionary annals such names
as Carroll and Sullivan, and to the Civil War men like Sheridan--men
who were Americans and nothing else: while the Irish who remain such,
and busy themselves solely with alien politics, can have only an
unhealthy influence upon American life, and can never rise as do their
compatriots who become straightout Americans. Thus it has ever been
with all people who have come hither, of whatever stock or blood. The
same thing is true of the churches. A church which remains foreign, in
language or spirit, is doomed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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