The American people are a peculiar people. They are peculiar in their origin, peculiar in their make-up, and due to their sufferings, their persecutions, and their enduring perseverance, they are still a peculiar people. From the first white man to steer his little wooden ship westward across the great Atlantic ocean to the latest arrival among the most recent immigrants, the people coming to America have been different from those people remaining in their European homes. The conditions surrounding the lives of those people in Europe who left their homes and first settled in America were not materially different from the conditions surrounding the lives of thousands of other people who were satisfied and content to remain on their European shores. Many men thought the earth was round long before Christopher Columbus sailed away from that little seaport town in Spain to test his own ideas of finding a shorter route to India. Many people believed in religious liberty long before the Pilgrims and Puritans landed on the bleak New England shores and suffered the hardships of first settlers in a new country in order to worship God as they pleased. Many people seriously and intelligently doubted the divine right of kings, and believed in the rights of the people to govern themselves long before the American colonists adopted the Declaration of Independence. But it was left for these people—these coming Americans—to demonstrate to all the world that America was to be peopled by men and women of different ideals, different hopes, and different ambitions from all the other nations of the world.