THEODORE ROOSEVELT proclaimed that the true hallmarks of the American character were “courage, vitality, perseverance, clean living, sturdy good sense, and an inflexible rectitude of soul.” All of this is true, but the president’s first word—courage—seems to capture the enduring quality of Americans that has been expressed throughout our history, whether fighting for liberty or seeking a better life in the face of physical hardship. It signals an indomitable spirit that has allowed us as a nation to stand tall when challenged, without fear or trepidation. Indeed, courage is not just the absence of fear; on the contrary, it is the ability to act in the face of one’s fears.
The stories in American Courage, which span almost four centuries, represent the best that Americans can be in times of crisis or when confronted with adversity. I began collecting these stories thirty years ago, and I still marvel that these splendid examples of courage are fact, not fiction. I have taken the selections from autobiographies, eyewit ness reports, and historical accounts; each is a good story well told, be it by the participant or a historian. At times I have edited the prose; each chapter has an introduction to set the scene historically. Though the collection does not aspire to be comprehensive, the writings are the voice of America’s remarkable history, marking our passage in world history as we fought, sometimes with ourselves, to build a free nation from scratch.
Many of the episodes in this book were decisive turning points in American history. After the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in December 1620, the Mayflower Compact, signed by forty-one adults, became a seeds-of-democracy landmark. The Pilgrims formed a “civil body politic” to frame “just and equal laws” and submit to the will of the majority in whatever regulations of government were agreed upon. Out of the 104 Mayflower passengers, only 50 survived that initial deadly winter. Yet these first settlers led the way for shipload after shipload of immigrants to follow them. William Bradford, the Pilgrims’ leader for thirty years, wrote with just pride, “May not, and ought not, the children of these fathers rightly say: ‘Our fathers were Englishmen who came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this Wilderness.’ ”
The fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence created a new nation—the United States of America. Each signer pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor. He was committing treason, and he was subject to death by hanging. In speaking of the prospect of hanging, heavyset, great-bellied Benjamin Harrison of Virginia wryly twitted tiny, wiry Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts: “With me it will be all over in a minute, but you, you will be dancing on air an hour after I am gone.” The jest captures the confidence with which these early patriots approached their deadly serious actions.
The Declaration was followed by Washington crossing the ice-choked Delaware River on Christmas night, 1776, in the most daring exploit of the Revolution. His password that night was “Victory or Death.” A snowstorm with near zero visibility shielded Washington’s movements, as he launched a two-prong surprise attack on Trenton, New Jersey. During the battle he rode up alone on horseback to a major and his troops, and called out, “March on, my brave fellows, after me!” while he spun his horse toward the enemy. His victory at Trenton, and a few days later at Princeton, where he whipped the British, turned the tide of the Revolutionary War.
Lesser-known episodes had historic consequences too. George Rogers Clark’s forced winter march to capture Vincennes (1779) from the British delivered the southern end of the Old Northwest territory (now Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) into American hands. Sam Houston with his seven hundred men and famous war cry “Remember the Alamo!” surprised and routed Santa Anna at San Jacinto. This battle won Texas its independence and set the stage for the Mexican War (1846–1848), whereafter Mexico relinquished all claims to Texas above the Rio Grande, and ceded New Mexico and California.
American Courage also includes breathtaking accounts of men and women whose daring and hardihood gave bone and sinew to our country—from Davy Crockett’s report from the Alamo and the chronicle of a slave escaping to freedom to the story of the D-Day invasion and the resolve of the passengers of Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. As the old-time cowboys said of the brave, “He had bones in his spinal column, and knew how to die standin’ up.” When twenty-five-year-old Charles Lindbergh first flew the Atlantic nonstop to Paris, Ambassador Herrick welcomed him with a speech fathering this thought: “A nation which breeds such boys need never fear for its future.”
The birth of American independence began with the courage to emigrate. The men and women who set foot on a gangplank and sailed across the Atlantic to face the unknown literally abandoned their parental roots. By a process of self-selection, our forefathers left behind the indecisive and timorous. Once here, after Father Time produced new generations, and as the frontier slowly moved west, the daring still went first. Early Texas pioneers said it with pith and punch:
Cowards never started.
Weaklings never got here.
And the unfit don’t stay.
And in Thomas Jefferson’s impassioned words: “There is not a single crowned head in Europe whose talents or merits would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the people of any parish in America.”
The turbulent frontier was the crucible for the new American breed. The historian Frederick Jackson Turner observed: “The wilderness masters the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in a birch canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in a log cabin of the Cherokee and Iroquois and runs an Indian palisade around him. In short, at first the environment is too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes, or perish.”
Behind the explorers came the fur trappers and hunters and then the pioneer settlers. In the land of the plains came the cattlemen, followed by the farmers who tilled the soil and fenced the land. People congregated in towns, and manufacturers arrived to recruit workers. Each group had its place in time, and its own frontier to master.
Looking back, this nation seems to have been perpetually at war during any given individual’s lifetime. Ours is a fighting nation, symbolized by an early American flag with a coiled rattlesnake, emblazoned with the words “Don’t tread on me.” Today our material conditions have changed, but what it means to be an American has not. We currently are engaged in a war on terror not of our own making. It seems that America will always be challenged and that our courageous national character will always be required. Take heart from these stories. Remember, “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”; expect no surcease. As the old-time cowboys said, “Keep your craw full of sand and fightin’ tallow.”
—HWW III