INTRODUCTION
1See, for example, Peggy Noonan, ‘What’s Become of the American Dream?’, Wall Street Journal, 6 April 2017.
2Carol Graham, ‘Is the American Dream Really Dead?’, Guardian, 20 June 2017.
3See, for example, Robert J. Shiller, ‘The Transformation of the “American Dream”’, New York Times, 4 August 2017.
4‘Taking Bad Ideas Seriously: How to Read Hitler and Ilyin?’, interview with Timothy Snyder, Eurozine, 28 August 2017.
5Dorothy Thompson, ‘What Lindbergh Really Wants’, Look, 18 November 1941, pp. 13–14; original emphasis.
6Women and people of colour were not held to have written novels of the American dream, of course, as their stories were never judged suitably universal.
PROLOGUE
1Tribune, Seymour, IN, 31 May 1927.
2Los Angeles Times, 31 May 1927.
4Ithaca Journal-News, Ithaca, NY, 3 November 1927.
5New York Times, 31 May 1927.
6Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 31 May 1927.
7Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 June 1927.
8Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 4 June 1927.
10Daily Messenger, Canandaigua, NY, 31 May 1927.
11Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 31 May 1927.
12Fred Trump is not named in all the reports, some of which only identify six arrests: five ‘avowed Klansmen’ and the unfortunate man whose foot was run over (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 31 May 1927). The New York Times, however, identified seven men arrested ‘in the near-riot of the parade’, who were arraigned in Jamaica Court, including ‘Fred Trump of 175–24 Devonshire Road, Jamaica’, who ‘was discharged’, New York Times, 1 June 1927.
1THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN DREAMS
1Semi-Weekly Messenger, Wilmington, NC, 4 December 1900.
3Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 16 December 1877.
4New Orleans Bulletin, 13 July 1875.
5Corvallis Gazette, Corvallis, OR, 20 February 1880.
6Goodwin’s Weekly, Salt Lake City, UT, 9 May 1903.
7‘Bastard dream’, St. Louis Republic, 23 September 1900; ‘Pan-American dream’, San Francisco Call, 12 June 1900.
8Minneapolis Journal, 29 September 1906.
9Times-Leader, Evening News, Wilkes-Barre, PA, 24 March 1916.
10Manchester Guardian, 20 December 1922.
11Cyril Ghosh, The Politics of the American Dream: Democratic Inclusion in Contemporary American Culture, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, p. 30.
12Record-Union, Sacramento, CA, 30 October 1899.
13New York Evening Post, New York, 17 January 1845; original emphasis.
14Sunday Inter Ocean, Chicago, IL, 28 April 1895.
15Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 9 October 1899.
16Leavenworth Times, Leavenworth, KS, 14 July 1908.
17Grover Cleveland, Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1893.
18Frank Parsons, The City for the People, or, The Municipalization of the City Government and of Local Franchises, Philadelphia: C. F. Taylor, 1900, p. 9.
19Philadelphia Times, 22 April 1900.
20Duluth Labor World, Duluth, MN, 21 September 1901.
21Manchester Guardian, 29 March 1910.
22David Graham Phillips, Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1917, Vol. I, p. 439.
24Chicago Tribune, 14 December 1912.
25For example, in a 2011 PhD dissertation on the American dream, James E. Ayers wrote: ‘The American dream makes its debut in print discourse in 1914 in journalist and political commentator Walter Lippmann’s book, Drift and Mastery … This is, historically, the first printed use of the term at all.’ James E. Ayers, ‘“The Colossal Vitality of His Illusion”: The Myth of the American Dream in the Modern American Novel’, LSU Doctoral Dissertations, 2767, p. 20. http://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2767. See also: John Kenneth White and Sandra L. Hanson, eds, The Making and Persistence of the American Dream, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011; and Demetri Lallas, ‘“From the People, by the People, to the People”: The American Dream(s) Debut’, Journal of American Culture, Vol. 37, No. 2, June 2014.
26Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest, New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1914, p. 211.
27Federalist No. 51, Independent Journal, 6 February 1788.
28Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest, New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1914, p. 177.
31John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 24th edn, London: W. Baynes & Son, 1823 (1689), p. 196.
32Sherwood Anderson, Windy McPherson’s Son, Book III, New York: John Lane, p. 257.
34Times-Dispatch, Richmond, VA, 20 August 1914.
2PURE AMERICANISM AGAINST THE UNIVERSE
1Tribune, Union, MO, 1 February 1889.
2New York Times, 19 June 1891.
3Morning News, Wilmington, DE, 13 November 1894.
4Advocate, Topeka, KS, 14 February 1894.
5Centralia Enterprise and Tribune, Centralia, WI, 2 December 1899.
6News-Journal, Mansfield, OH, 1 December 1914.
7Baltimore Sun, 21 April 1915.
9John Brisben Walker, ‘Woodrow Wilson: Has He Been for “America First?”’ Address given at Cooper Union, 18 November 1915.
10Chicago Tribune, 2 June 1889.
11New York Times, 14 September 1889.
12Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN, 14 April 1912.
13See, for example: Baltimore Sun, 14 October 1892; and Natchez Democrat, Natchez, MS, 13 October 1916. ‘Mercenary minded – money mad’, ‘unmergeable’, ‘alien and unassimilable’ from H. W. Evans, ‘The Menace of Modern Immigration’, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, pamphlet, 1924, p. 24.
14New York Times, 13 October 1915.
16Lawrence Daily Journal-World, Lawrence, KS, 19 October 1915.
17Palladium-Item, Richmond, IN, 29 October 1915.
18New York Times, 14 June 1916.
20Cincinnati Enquirer, 8 June 1916, p. 2.
21Scranton Republican, Scranton, PA, 7 November 1916.
22Allentown Leader, Allentown, PA, 26 January 1916.
23Washington Post, 26 April 1916.
24North American Review, Vol. 204, No. 731, October 1916, p. 514; original emphasis.
25Altoona Tribune, Altoona, PA, 25 October 1916.
26Los Angeles Times, 2 January 1916.
27Farmer and Mechanic, Raleigh, NC, 3 November 1903.
28Weekly Journal-Miner, Prescott, AZ, 6 June 1917.
29Arizona Republic, Phoenix, AZ, 28 June 1916.
30Wichita Daily Eagle, Wichita, KS, 28 November 1915.
31Reno Gazette-Journal, Reno, NV, 2 August 1917.
32New York Tribune, 30 September 1917.
33Hardin County Ledger, Eldora, IA, 15 February 1917.
34Quoted in John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, p. 585.
35New York Times, 19 July 1918.
38Topeka State Journal, Topeka, KS, 31 May 1916.
39Roosevelt’s position on race was complicated. While he shared many of the eugenicist assumptions of white superiority of his time, he also believed in racial ‘uplift’ and progress, that black people could advance, and in 1901 he was the first president to invite a black person, his friend, adviser and former slave Booker T. Washington, to dine at the White House, a decision that shifted the national conversation on race, and made him the target of a deluge of racist vitriol. For a fuller examination of Roosevelt’s perspectives on race, see Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.
40Portsmouth Herald, Portsmouth, NH, 1 June 1918.
41Argus-Leader, Sioux Falls, SD, 1 July 1918.
43San Francisco Chronicle, 9 February 1919.
45Cincinnati Enquirer, 1 May 1923.
46Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916, p. 198.
47Ibid., p. 98. There is an enormous literature on scientific racism and its relation to Americanism. See, for example, Ewa Barbara Luczak, Breeding and Eugenics in the American Literary Imagination: Heredity Rules in the Twentieth Century, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, p. 164: ‘The reference to the nordic race quickly grew to embody the doctrine of the superiority of the American descendants of North European immigrants and came to be identified with Americanism’.
48Greensboro Daily News, Greensboro, NC, 17 October 1920.
49Wichita Daily Eagle, Wichita, KS, 1 March 1918.
50Ocala Evening Star, Ocala, FL, 5 April 1918.
51Liberator, Boston, MA, 26 September 1835.
52Anti-Slavery Bugle, Lisbon, OH, 24 November 1855.
53New York Times, 10 February 1859.
55Henderson Gold Leaf, Henderson, NC, 27 February 1902.
56Hernán Vera and Andrew M. Gordon, Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness, New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003, p. 20.
57The number was widely circulated in 1922, including in a full-page advertisement the NAACP took out in the New York Times, while local papers around the country reported: ‘3436 victims have been lynched by mobs since 1889. Only 17 per cent of them were accused of assaulting women. Lynched victims included 64 women.’ Richmond Item, Richmond, IN, 13 January 1922.
3WHAT DO YOU CALL THAT BUT SOCIALISM?
1Oregon Daily Journal, Portland, OR, 27 March 1918.
2Burlington Free Press, Burlington, VT, 10 December 1915.
3Chicago Tribune, 7 February 1916.
4Evening World, New York, NY, 26 February 1917.
6Chicago Tribune, 18 January 1917.
7Baltimore Sun, 7 January 1917, p. 6; Washington Post, Washington DC, 15 July 1919.
8Daily Times, Davenport, IA, 5 September 1917.
9Chicago Tribune, 29 October 1917, p. 8.
11Walnut Valley Times, El Dorado, KS, 25 April 1918.
12Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, NE, 7 November 1918.
13San Bernardino County Sun, San Bernardino, CA, 25 June 1919.
14Reading Times, Reading, PA, 4 November 1919.
15Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, NE, 1 January 1920.
16Chattanooga News, Chattanooga, TN, 5 January 1918.
17Theodore Dreiser, Twelve Men, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998 (1919), p. 219.
18George Barr McCutcheon, West Wind Drift, New York: A.L. Burt Company, 1920, pp. 292–3.
4WE HAVE EMERGED FROM DREAMLAND
1Greensboro Daily News, Greensboro, NC, 25 July 1916.
2Buffalo Commercial, Buffalo, NY, 17 February 1917.
3Washington Times, 29 August 1917.
4Los Angeles Times, 4 April 1918.
5Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, New York: Little, Brown, 1980, pp. 158–9.
6New York Herald, 27 January 1919.
7St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 20 November 1918.
8New York Tribune, 1 March 1920.
9Washington Times, 8 February 1920.
10Scranton Republican, Scranton, PA, 26 July 1919.
11Burlington Free Press, Burlington, VT, 28 May 1920.
12New York Times, 29 February 1920.
15Times-Dispatch, Richmond, VA, 10 March 1920.
17Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 13 February 1920.
18New York Times, 20 March 1920.
20Courier, Asheboro, NC, 5 August 1920.
21Indianapolis Journal, 23 December 1895.
22Albany-Decatur Daily, Albany, AL, 8 June 1920.
23Fayetteville Observer, Fayetteville, NC, 1 July 1920.
24Kinsley Mercury, Kinsley, KS, 1 July 1920.
25Winston-Salem Journal, Winston-Salem, NC, 2 July 1920.
26El Paso Herald, El Paso, TX, 3 July 1920.
27New York Times, 25 July 1920.
29Pittsburgh Daily Post, 1 July 1920.
31New York Times, 19 October 1920.
32Warren G. Harding, ‘Address to Foreign Born’, Marion, OH, 18 September 1920.
33New York Times, 25 October 1920.
39Indianapolis Star, 23 February 1920.
40News and Observer, Raleigh, NC, 5 July 1919.
41New York Tribune, 2 February 1920.
42Washington Progress, Washington, NC, 22 July 1920.
43‘Economic competition between the negroes and the “poor whites” is a source of trouble … The Southern “cracker” is the bitterest enemy of the negro, and he leads and composes a large part of the lynching parties’, Courier-Journal, Louisville, KT, 10 May 1903.
44North Platte Semi-Weekly Tribune, North Platte, NE, 23 November 1920.
45Dallas Express, 17 January 1920.
46Santa Ana Register, Santa Ana, CA, 10 December 1920.
47Dallas Express, 17 January 1920.
48New York Herald, October 1920.
49Lincoln Star, Lincoln, NE, 28 October 1920.
50Quoted in Public Ledger, Maysville, KY, 30 October 1920.
51Daily Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock, AR, 31 October 1920, p. 24.
53St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 31 October 1920.
54William Allen White to Ray Stannard Baker, 8 December 1920, Walter Johnson, ed., Selected Letters of William Allen White, New York: Henry Holt, 1947, p. 213.
5SALESMEN OF PROSPERITY
1Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century, p. 190.
2Pittsburgh Press, 6 January 1922.
3Akron Beacon Journal, Akron, OH, 11 January 1922.
4Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922, p. 13.
9James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America, New York: Little, Brown, 1947 (1931), p. 191.
10Rupert Brooke, Letters from America, New York: Beaufort, 1988 (1916), p. 68.
11New York Times, 16 October 1922.
12Oregon Daily Journal, Portland, OR, 2 July 1922.
13Chicago Tribune, 27 March 1923.
14While most historians start the genealogy of the ‘American dream’ in 1931, some do trace it back to Lippmann in 1923 and fewer to his Drift and Mastery in 1914. While I was pursuing this research, I published journalism that used each date as I discovered them. That information has since been superseded by my subsequent research here. See, for example, Scott A. Sandage, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 337.
15Walter Lippmann, ‘The Mental Age of Americans: II. The Mystery of the “A” Men’, New Republic 32, No. 413 (1 November 1922), 246–8.
16Ibid., No. 417 (29 November 1922), 9–11.
17Hartford Courant, Hartford, CT, 2 May 1918, p. 14.
18Phil A. Kinsley, ‘The Vegetable Proves Bird When Right Post Is Found’, Philadelphia Record, 13 May 1923. In Jackson Bryer, ed., F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Critical Reception, New York: Burt Franklin & Co., 1978, p. 172.
19Chicago Tribune, 1 July 1923.
20Harrisburg Telegraph, Harrisburg, PA, 20 July 1923.
6THE SIMPLICITY OF GOVERNMENT
1Warren G. Harding, Our Common Country: Mutual Good Will in America, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003 (1921), p. 18.
2Baltimore Sun, 19 December 1920.
3Salt Lake Herald-Republican, Salt Lake City, UT, 1 February 1920; Washington Herald, Washington DC, 19 April 1920.
4New York Times, 22 January 1921.
5Harding, Our Common Country, p. 73.
9Charlotte News, Charlotte, NC, 25 June 1921.
11See, for example, the Courier-Journal, Louisville, KT, 10 January 1920: ‘The Socialist party … stands discredited and its members are shunned by every 100 per cent American … One hundred per cent Americanism means the destruction of I.W.W.-ism, Boolshevism [sic] and Socialism … Should the “unexpected happen” and the three alien enemies arrested in Louisville on immigration warrants escape deportation by immigration authorities, officials declared last night that there are “two other steps” that can be taken leading to their deportation … Volunteer informers are coming … every day, explaining activities of person with radical tendencies. L.A. Hickman, attorney … said yesterday he was just as desirous as every other 100 per cent American to “see the ‘Reds’ get what is their due”.’
12Cincinnati Enquirer, 12 November 1919.
13Upton Sinclair, 100%: The Story of a Patriot, The Floating Press, 2013 (1920), p. 133.
16Walter Lippmann, Men of Destiny, New York: Macmillan, 1927, p. 8.
17Tampa Bay Times, St Petersburg, FL, 6 July 1921.
18Evening Star, Washington DC, 25 February 1922.
19Marion Star, Marion, OH, 5 March 1921.
20Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 16 January 1921.
21St. Louis Star and Times, 5 March 1921.
22New York Times, 14 November 1921.
23Harrisburg Telegraph, Harrisburg, PA, 8 August 1921.
24Wilmington Morning Star, Wilmington, NC, 4 March 1921.
25Des Moines Register, 16 July 1921.
26Capital Times, Madison, WI, 21 March 1921; original emphasis.
27Calvin Coolidge, ‘Whose Country Is This?’, Good Housekeeping, February 1921, Vol. 72, No. 2, pp. 13, 14, 106, 109.
28Pittsburgh Daily Post, 27 January 1922.
29Muncie Evening Press, Muncie, IN, 14 February 1921.
30New York Tribune, 28 January 1921.
31Palm Beach Post, West Palm Beach, FL, 28 January 1921.
32Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 21 July 1921.
33Evening World, New York, 6 September 1921.
34Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, New York: Harper & Row, 1931, p. 54.
35Evening World, New York, September 1921.
36Nancy K. MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 8–9.
37Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Kloran, Ku Klux Press, 1918, p. 5.
38Salina Evening Journal, Salina, KS, 31 October 1922.
39Reprinted in Los Angeles Times, 9 October 1921. Klan historian Nancy MacLean, for example, would write in 1995: ‘Much more than American historians have realized, in fact, Klan ideology shared common features with its Nazi contemporary’, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, p. 180. Historians may later have lost sight of this resemblance, but the Americans who lived through both phenomena did not.
40Morning Register, Eugene, OR, 1 January 1922.
41Town Talk, Alexandria, LA, 30 January 1922.
42McKinney Courier-Gazette, McKinney, TX, 17 August 1922.
43New York Times, 24 November 1922.
46Ibid., 13 February 1923 and 22 June 1923.
47Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1 February 1921.
48Great Falls Tribune, Great Falls, MT, 29 May 1921.
49Tampa Times, 12 December 1922.
50Appeal, St Paul, MN, 9 December 1922.
51Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN, 1 August 1921.
52Philadelphia Inquirer, 5 August 1922.
53New York Tribune, 12 November 1922.
54Great Falls Tribune, Great Falls, MT, 5 November 1922.
55New York Times, 21 November 1922.
57Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1 April 1923.
59Des Moines Register, 9 August 1923.
60News Leader, Staunton, VA, 27 September 1923.
61Washington Times, Washington DC, 17 November 1922.
62Appeal, St Paul, MN, 23 December 1922.
64Baltimore Sun, 30 December 1922.
65Des Moines Register, 21 January 1923.
66St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 31 May 1923.
67Independent Record, Helena, MT, 14 May 1923.
68El Paso Herald, 13 December 1922.
70Chicago Tribune, 18 November 1922.
71St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 6 May 1923.
72Star Press, Muncie, IN, 12 November 1922.
73Wichita Daily Times, Wichita Falls, TX, 3 January 1922.
74Buffalo American, Buffalo, NY, 29 July 1920.
76Dallas Express, 16 December 1922.
77Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 30 September 1923.
79Baltimore Sun, 22 March 1923.
80El Paso Herald, 10 April 1923.
81New York Times, 3 May 1923.
82Baltimore Sun, 22 March 1923, p. 26.
84Santa Ana Register, Santa Ana, CA, 20 March 1923.
85Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, NE, 23 March 1923.
7A WILLINGNESS OF THE HEART
1F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Oxford University Press, 1998 (1925), p. 14.
6Bruce Barton, The Man Nobody Knows: A Discovery of the Real Jesus, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1924, 1925, pp. iv, 32, 23.
10Ibid., pp. 159–63; original emphasis.
11Racine Journal-Times, Racine, WI, 19 January 1925.
12Calvin Coolidge, ‘Have Faith in Massachusetts: Massachusetts Senate President Acceptance Speech’, 7 January 1914.
13Daily Republican, Monongahela, PA, 3 September 1925.
14Los Angeles Times, 29 January 1926; Daily Times, Davenport, IA, 29 January 1926.
15Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 12 June 1927.
16Philadelphia Inquirer, 17 October 1925.
17Ironwood Daily Globe, Ironwood, MI, 1 Oct 1927.
18Morning Herald, Uniontown, PA, 17 September 1925; Ithaca Journal, Ithaca, NY, 16 November 1929.
19Los Angeles Times, 6 July 1925.
20St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 18 March 1928.
21Miami News, 8 April 1927.
22Los Angeles Times, 12 August 1928.
23Fitzgerald, ‘The Swimmers’, Saturday Evening Post, 19 October 1929, p. 13.
8A SUPER PATRIOT, PATRIOT
1Philadelphia Inquirer, 2 July 1923.
2Chicago Tribune, 12 December 1923.
4Baltimore Sun, 14 September 1923.
5H. W. Evans, ‘The Menace of Modern Immigration’, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, pamphlet, 1924, pp. 6–8.
6New York Times, 18 November 1923.
11St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 17 May 1924.
12New York Times, 25 September 1924.
13Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, NY, 23 June 1924.
14See, for example, Thomas Pegram, One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth & Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, Chicago: Ivar R. Dee, 2011, on estimating membership numbers. Pegram concludes: ‘Reasonable estimates of Klan membership range from about two million members to four or even five million Klansmen at the peak of the movement,’ p. 26. Nancy Maclean writes that by the mid-1920s ‘the total reached perhaps as high as five million, distributed through nearly four thousand local chapters. Yet the numbers barely suggest the reach of the Klan’s tentacles.’ Behind the Mask of Chivalry, p. 10.
15Age, Melbourne, Australia, 14 February 1924.
16Mail Tribune, Medford, OR, 29 December 1924.
18New York Times, 11 August 1980.
19New York Times, 21 June 1924.
20Kenneth L. Roberts, ‘Shutting the Sea Gates’, Saturday Evening Post, 28 January 1922, p. 51.
21Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minneapolis, MN, 3 July 1922.
24Vardaman’s Weekly, Jackson, MI, 10 May 1923.
25Marion Democrat, Marion, AL, 10 April 1907.
26Philadelphia Inquirer, 13 April 1924.
27New York Times, 17 October 1924.
28Detroit Free Press, 27 October 1924.
29Asbury Park Press, Asbury Park, NJ, 6 October 1925.
30Freeport Journal-Standard, Freeport, IL, 22 April 1921.
31Buffalo American, Buffalo, NY, 19 November 1925.
32North American Review (1821–1940), 1 March 1926, Vol. CCXXIII, No. 830, p. 52.
33Manchester Guardian, 9 November 1926.
34Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2 February 1928.
35St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 30 October 1927.
36New York Times, 6 November 1927.
37Chicago Tribune, 5 April 1928.
38St. Joseph Observer, St Joseph, MO, 7 October 1927, p. 1.
9DAS DOLLARLAND
1Allan Nevins, James Truslow Adams: Historian of the American Dream, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1968, p. 68.
2Adams, The Epic of America, p. viii.
10Garet Garrett, ‘America Can’t Come Back’, Saturday Evening Post, 23 January 1932.
11Noblesville Ledger, Noblesville, IN, 1 January 1929.
12Allen, Only Yesterday, p. 146.
13James Truslow Adams, A Searchlight on America, New York: Routledge 1930, p. 143.
14New York Times, 9 April 1933.
18John Dewey, ‘Tomorrow May Be Too Late’, Good Housekeeping, 20–1 March 1934.
19Pantagraph, Bloomington, IL, 30 January 1934.
20Decatur Daily Review, Decatur, IL, 11 November 1934.
21New York Times, 13 January 1934.
22Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 26 June 1932.
23New York Times, 27 May 1932.
25Nevins, Adams, p. 198.
26New York Times, 14 May 1933.
10THE OFFICIAL RECOGNITION OF REALITY
1Chicago Tribune, 21 March 1933.
2Dorothy Thompson, I Saw Hitler, New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1932, p. 14.
4Ibid., p. 4; original emphasis.
5Daily Press, Newport News, VA, 3 May 1933.
6Dorothy Thompson, Saturday Evening Post, ‘Back to Blood and Iron’, 6 May 1933, and ‘Room to Breathe In’, 24 June 1933.
7New York Times, 21 February 1926.
8MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, p. 178.
9Altoona Mirror, Altoona, PA, 19 July 1930.
10Baltimore Sun, 12 September 1930.
11Dixon Evening Telegraph, Dixon, IL, 27 August 1930.
12Baltimore Sun, 12 September 1930.
13Oshkosh Northwestern, Oshkosh, WI, 2 September 1930.
14Oakland Tribune, Oakland, CA, 18 May 1930.
15Pittsburgh Courier, 31 May 1930.
16Muncie Evening Press, Muncie, IN, 8 August 1930.
17New Yorker, 8 September 1934, p. 26.
18New York Times, 28 October 1934.
19Quoted in Dora Apel, Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004, p. 137.
20Ibid.
21Tampa Bay Times, St Petersburg, FL, 23 October 2011.
22Times, Shreveport, LA, 3 March 1930.
23Decatur Herald, Decatur, IL, 10 October 1930.
24Sandusky Register, Sandusky, OH, 14 October 1930.
25Detroit Free Press, 27 April 1930; Ludington Daily News, Ludington, MI, 10 August 1930.
26New York Times, 31 December 1931.
27Millard County Chronicle, Delta, UT, 29 February 1930.
28New York Times, 3 January 1932.
29Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, NE, 8 January 1932.
31Quad-City Times, Davenport, IA, 19 January 1932.
32New York Times, 17 January 1932.
35New Castle News, New Castle, PA, 7 July 1933.
36Kentucky Advocate, Danville, KY, 8 July 1933.
37Oakland Tribune, Oakland, CA, 25 April 1933.
39Morning News, Wilmington, DE, 7 October 1933.
40New York Times, 29 January 1933.
42Akron Beacon Journal, Akron, OH, 20 December 1933.
43Miami News, 28 August 1933.
44Morning Call, Allentown, PA, 19 May 1934.
45Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 18 May 1934.
46Chicago Tribune, 18 May 1934.
47New York Times, 18 May 1934.
49Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 13 August 1934.
50New York Times, 10 September 1934.
51Scranton Republican, Scranton, PA, 9 September 1934.
52New York Times, 17 September 1934.
55Times Herald, Port Huron, MI, 28 November 1934.
56Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, NY, 25 September 1934.
57Burlington Free Press, Burlington, VT, 17 September 1934.
58Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn, NY, 30 September 1934.
59Burlington Free Press, Burlington, VT, 17 September 1934.
11THE PAGEANT OF HISTORY
1New York Times, 9 April 1934.
3Clovis News-Journal, Clovis, NM, 29 June 1934.
4Shamokin News-Dispatch, Shamokin, PA, 22 September 1934.
5Los Angeles Times, 8 August 1934.
6New York Times, 7 August 1934.
7Asbury Park Press, Asbury Park, NJ, 18 November 1935.
8Courier-Journal, Louisville, KY, 30 August 1935.
9Des Moines Register, 1 December 1935.
10Statesman Journal, Salem, OR, 13 August 1935.
11Lincoln Star, Lincoln, NE, 2 May 1935.
12Lincoln Evening Journal, Lincoln, NE, 2 May 1935.
13Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, NY, 1 July 1935.
14Ithaca Journal, Ithaca, NY, 23 November 1935.
15Daily Press, Newport News, VA, 15 June 1935.
16Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 15 September 1935.
17Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, AZ, 22 September 1935.
18Des Moines Register, 13 December 1935.
19Eugene Guard, Eugene, OR, 28 May 1935.
20John Hyde Preston, ‘Searching for Roots in America’, Harper’s, October 1936.
21Baltimore Sun, 14 December 1936.
22Pittsburgh Press, 27 June 1935.
23Herbert Agar, What is America?, London: Eyre Spottiswoode, 1936, pp. 228–9.
24New York Times, 11 June 1936.
25Minneapolis Star, 15 May 1936.
26Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Address at Madison Square Garden, New York City, 31 October 1936.
27Quoted in Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, NE, 26 November 1938.
28Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, UT, 22 January 1937.
29Republic, Columbus, IN, 20 January 1936.
30Greeley Daily Tribune, Greeley, CO, 20 February 1937.
31Ogden Standard-Examiner, Ogden, UT, 29 December 1937; Courier News, Blytheville, AR, 30 December 1937; Anniston Star, Anniston, AL, 28 December 1937.
32Reading Times, Reading, PA, 28 April 1938.
33A 1949 item headlined ‘The American Dream’ is the earliest association I have seen; it begins: ‘The green-shuttered country cottage with a white picket fence around it has become as emblematic of American aspiration as was homemade apple pie a symbol of American soldier hope during the last war.’ Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, UT, 1 May 1949.
34Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 29 August 1937.
35Courier-News, Bridgewater, NJ, 15 August 1935.
36New York Times, 3 July 1943.
37Times-Leader, Evening News, Wilkes-Barre, PA, 21 October 1937.
38Cincinnati Enquirer, 26 February 1938.
39Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 25 February 1939.
40Hartford Courant, Hartford, CT, 3 February 1938.
41New York Times, 30 October 1938, Section 6.
42Los Angeles Times, 24 April 1938.
43Denton Journal, Denton, MD, 16 April 1938.
44St. Louis Star and Times, 4 October 1938.
45Lead Daily Call, Lead, SD, 14 April 1938.
47Post-Register, Idaho Falls, ID, 14 April 1938.
48Hope Star, Hope, AR, 16 December 1938.
49Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, NE, 28 November 1938.
50Although the earliest example the OED offers of the American political usage of ‘libertarian’ is from 1945, and political scientists date the movement to the early 1950s, the meaning was in use in the US by 1893: ‘Society cannot much longer get on upon the old libertarian, competitive, go-as-you-please system to which so many sensible persons seem addicted’, Stark County Democrat, Canton, OH, 19 October 1893.
51Baltimore Sun, 1 December 1938.
52Tennessean, Nashville, TN, 25 November 1938.
53Times, Shreveport, LA, 27 November 1938.
54Cincinnati Enquirer, 5 May 1939.
55Sheboygan Press, Sheboygan, WI, 31 May 1939.
56St. Louis Star and Times, 13 July 1939.
57John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, New York: Penguin, 1939, p. 112.
59New York Times, 19 February 1939.
12IT CAN HAPPEN HERE
1Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 10 February 1935.
3Pittsburgh Press, 11 March 1935.
4St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 19 August 1935.
5See, for example, Pittsburgh Press, 30 November 1934.
6Hartford Courant, Hartford, CT, 11 September 1935.
7Forrest Davis, Huey Long: A Candid Biography, New York: Dodge Publishing, 1935, p. 286.
8Baltimore Sun, 3 September 1935.
9Cincinnati Enquirer, 7 October 1935.
10Letter from Thompson to Sinclair Lewis, 13 March 1933. Quoted in Peter Kurth, American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson, Boston: Little, Brown, 1990, p. 187.
11Cincinnati Enquirer, 28 May 1936.
13Oakland Tribune, Oakland, CA, 3 May 1936.
14Christian Century, Vol. 53, 5 February 1936, p. 245.
15Central Home New Jersey Home News, New Brunswick, NJ, 20 February 1936.
16San Bernardino County Sun, San Bernardino, CA, 26 July 1936.
17Morning Call, Allentown, PA, 21 July 1936.
18Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Corpus Christi, TX, 24 July 1936.
19W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880, New York: Free Press, 1999 (1935), p. 700.
20‘Jew Shoot’, Time, 24 August 1936.
22Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, Milwaukee, WI, 28 August 1936.
23Independent Record, Helena, MT, 21 February 1937.
24Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln, NE, 6 September 1937.
25Tampa Tribune, Tampa, FL, 14 September 1937.
26Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, AZ, 1 August 1937; Courier, Waterloo, IA, 1 September 1937.
27New York Times, 17 August 1937.
28Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 18 September 1937.
29St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 3 October 1937.
30Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4 October 1937.
31Marion Star, Marion, OH, 4 October 1937.
32Cincinnati Enquirer, 27 September 1937.
33News of the World, Hollywood, CA, 18 September 1937.
34Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 27 June 1937.
35Greenville News, Greenville, SC, 3 November 1937.
36Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11 January 1938.
37Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 6 April 1938.
38New York Times, 12 September 1938.
40Ian Mugridge, The View from Xanadu: William Randolph Hearst and United States Foreign Policy, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995, p. 113.
41Times-Leader, Evening News, Wilkes-Barre, PA, 2 May 1939.
42Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, SD, 6 May 1939.
43Moberly Monitor-Index, Moberly, MO, 19 November 1938.
45Star Press, Muncie, IN, 19 November 1938.
47Kurth, American Cassandra, p. 328.
48Daily Capital Journal, Salem, OR, 3 January 1939.
49Emporia Gazette, Emporia, KS, 3 January 1939.
50Abilene Reporter-News, Abilene, TX, 21 October 1939.
51Asheville Citizen-Times, Asheville, NC, 6 September 1939.
52Oakland Tribune, Oakland, CA, 15 February 1939.
53Pittsburgh Press, 27 January 1939.
54New York Times, 13 January 1939.
55Daily Press, Newport News, VA, 17 February 1939.
56Decatur Daily Review, Decatur, IL, 21 February 1939.
57Danville Morning News, Danville, PA, 21 February 1939.
58‘Stupid fools’, Danville Morning News, Danville, PA, 21 February 1939; ‘President Rosenfeld’, San Bernardino County Sun, San Bernardino, CA, 21 February 1939.
59Reading Times, Reading, PA, 1 March 1939.
60Chillicothe Gazette, Chillicothe, OH, 21 February 1939.
61Santa Cruz Sentinel, Santa Cruz, CA, 21 February 1939.
62Greenville News, Greenville, SC, 21 February 1939.
63Cincinnati Enquirer, 22 February 1939.
64St. Louis Star and Times, 5 August 1939.
65Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY, 7 July 1939.
66Indianapolis Star, 30 March 1939.
67Miami News, 5 March 1939.
68New York Times, 6 October 1939.
69Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 14 October 1939.
70Cincinnati Enquirer, 2 June 1939.
71Quoted in Kurth, American Cassandra, p. 310.
13AMERICANS! WAKE UP!
1Jackson Sun, Jackson, TN, 13 November 1938.
2Cincinnati Enquirer, 23 November 1938.
3Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 25 December 1938.
4Pittsburgh Press, 10 December 1938.
5Daily Times, Davenport, IO, 19 December 1938.
6Times-Leader, Evening News, Wilkes-Barre, PA, 11 July 1940.
7Akron Beacon Journal, Akron, OH, 11 July 1940.
8St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 8 October 1940.
9New York Herald Tribune, 20 September 1939.
10Detroit Free Press, 19 October 1939.
11Plain Speaker, Hazelton, PA, 20 October 1939.
12Quoted in Kurth, American Cassandra, p. 311.
13Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City, UT, 28 January 1940.
14Jackson Sun, Jackson, TN, 7 July 1940.
15Harrisburg Telegraph, Harrisburg, PA, 3 June 1940.
17Courier-Journal, Louisville, KT, 17 June 1940.
21St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 18 August 1940.
22Tribune, Kokomo, IN, 15 March 1940.
23Eau Claire Leader, Eau Claire, WI, 1 November 1940.
24Guy Greer, ‘Arming and Paying for It’, Harper’s, November 1940.
25Hartford Courant, Hartford, CT, 20 June 1941.
26Minneapolis Star, 21 April 1941.
27News-Dispatch, Shamokin, PA, 30 April 1941.
28Harrisburg Telegraph, Harrisburg, PA, 25 June 1940.
29Amarillo Globe Times, Amarillo, TX, 7 October 1940.
30Freeport Journal-Standard, Freeport, IL, 24 May 1940.
31Medford Mail Tribune, Medford, OR, 9 June 1940.
32Iola Register, Iola, KS, 6 August 1940.
33The claim that the America First Committee of 1940 originated the slogan ‘America first’ is widespread. See, for example: Louisa Thomas, ‘America First, For Charles Lindbergh and Donald Trump’, New Yorker, 24 July 2016; Eric Rauchway, ‘Donald Trump’s new favorite slogan was invented for Nazi sympathizers’, Washington Post, 14 June 2016; Susan Dunn, ‘Trump’s “America First” has ugly echoes from U.S. history’, CNN, 28 April 2016; ‘“America First”: From Charles Lindbergh to President Trump’, NPR podcast, 6 February 2017. Historian Timothy Snyder made the same claim in an October 2017 interview, ‘Trump and Bannon’s idea of “America First” is technically from 1940’, from ‘Taking Bad Ideas Seriously: How to Read Hitler and Ilyin?’, interview with Timothy Snyder, Eurozine, 28 August 2017.
34Lindbergh, ‘Our Relationship with Europe’, August 1940.
35Daily Times, Davenport, IA, 30 December 1940.
37Abilene Reporter-News, Abilene, TX, 24 January 1941.
38Cincinnati Enquirer, 17 February 1941.
39Escanaba Daily Press, Escanaba, MI, 18 February 1941.
40Tampa Bay Times, St Petersburg, FL, 23 February 1941.
41Quad-City Times, Davenport, IA, 17 August 1941.
42Sikeston Standard, Sikeston, MO, 7 November 1941.
43St. Louis Star and Times, 18 October 1941.
44Minneapolis Star, 20 July 1941.
45Harrisburg Telegraph, Harrisburg, PA, 25 April 1941.
46Index-Journal, Greenwood, SC, 28 May 1941.
47Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, NE, 6 June 1941.
48Cincinnati Enquirer, 4 June 1941.
49Pittsburgh Press, 18 May 1941.
50Miami News, 21 March 1941.
51Independent Record, Helena, MT, 14 April 1941.
52Chicago Tribune, 25 April 1941.
53Daily Times, Davenport, IA, 29 April 1941.
54Daily Tar Heel, Chapel Hill, NC, 29 January 1941.
55Akron Beacon Journal, Akron, OH, 8 March 1941.
56St. Louis Star and Times, 16 August 1941.
58Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life, New York: McGraw Hill, 1961, p. 661.
59Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, NY, 30 April 1941.
60Arizona Republic, Phoenix, AZ, 29 April 1941.
61Akron Beacon Journal, Akron, OH, 13 July 1941.
62Star Gazette, Elmira, NY, 9 June 1941.
63Oakland Tribune, Oakland, CA, 28 June 1941.
64Moberly Monitor-Index, Moberly, MO, 19 November 1938.
65Daily Times, Davenport, IO, 16 September 1941.
66Quoted in Des Moines Register, 14 September 1941.
68Daily Times, Davenport, IO, 16 September 1941.
70News Leader, Staunton, VA, 20 October 1941.
71Minneapolis Star, 25 September 1941.
72New York Times, 26 September 1941.
74Weekly Town Talk, Alexandria, LA, 27 September 1941. Reprint of Hearst editorial from New York Journal-American.
75Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, Milwaukee, WI, 19 September 1941.
76Stanberry Headlight, Stanberry, MO, 16 October 1941.
77Des Moines Register, 13 September 1941.
78Dorothy Thompson, ‘What Lindbergh Really Wants’, Look, 18 November 1941, pp. 13–14.
80Cincinnati Enquirer, 17 December 1941.
STILL AMERICA FIRSTING
1Star Gazette, Elmira, NY, 28 January 1942.
2John Fousek, To Lead the Free World: American Nationalism and the Cultural Roots of the Cold War, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
3Warning against ‘the infiltration of inharmonious racial or nationality groups,’ the Federal Housing handbook stated that ‘a change in social or racial occupancy generally leads to instability and a reduction in values,’ the Federal Housing handbook stated. The Handbook of Social Policy, James O. Midgley and Michelle Livermore, eds, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008, p. 406.
4New York Times, 27 August 2016.
5This is such a customary view that it is even shared in popular outlets. See for example ‘“I Have A Dream” Speech’s Social Critique Sometimes Lost In Celebrations’, Huffington Post, 24 August 2013, in which several civil rights historians stress the ‘subversive’ and ‘prophetic’ nature of King’s speech.
6The Invisible Empire Token, supposedly commemorating the centennial year of the Ku Klux Klan, Cajun Coins, Mandeville, LA, 1965.
7Francis X. Clines, ‘Trump Quits Grand Old Party for New’, New York Times, 25 October 1999.
8New York Times, 14 February 2000.
10Glenn Kessler, Fact Checker: ‘Donald Trump and David Duke: For the Record’, Washington Post, 1 March 2016.
11Los Angeles Times, 20 January 2017.
12‘David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader, to run for Congress’, BBC News, 22 July 2016.
13US News & World Report, 28 February 2016.
15See for example ‘Sebastian Gorka and the White House’s Questionable Vetting’, Atlantic, 26 March 2017, and ‘Sebastian Gorka: Former Trump Aide Accused of Ties to Nazi Group Heads to Israel’, Newsweek, 6 September 2017.
16New York Times, 11 January 2018.
17Houston Chronicle, 15 January 2018.
18See for example websites including Amfirstbooks.com, which recycle the eugenicist theories of Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, and issue warnings such as ‘America, Look to Norway, and Look at Yourself and Stop Murdering Nordic Peoples!’ They inform their readers that ‘the Nordic countries must maintain a certain level of homogeneity to preserve the “Viking traits” that give them an edge in technological innovation and entrepreneurial start-ups.’ Their versions of American history also combine Nordicism with Lost Cause myths: ‘The real coup de grace came with the “King Lincoln” dictatorship during the War of Northern Aggression Against Southern Independence … By embracing forced racial and ethnic integration, the Federal government smothered Nordic/Celtic entrepreneurial tribal culture and accelerated a de facto Jewish-Catholic dispossession of WASPs from the strategic bases of society. On an ethnic level, the Federal government made its first major foray into the forced racial integration business during the so-called “Reconstruction Era” by installing anti-Southern white carpetbagger regimes in the South …’ Etc.
19‘The Choice 2016’, Frontline, PBS, Season 35, Episode 1, 27 September 2016.
20Donald Trump Interview, CNN, Correspondent: Becky Anderson, 10 February 2010.
21‘Trump Challenges Tillerson to “Compare IQ Tests” After Reported “Moron” Dig’, Guardian, 10 October 2017.
22Hadley Freeman, ‘Donald Trump: It is My Hair and It is an Amazing Thing’, Guardian, 2 October 2012.
23Peter Baker, ‘DNA Shows Warren Harding Wasn’t America’s First Black President’, New York Times, 18 August 2015.
24Adam Serwer, ‘Jeff Sessions’s Unqualified Praise for a 1924 Immigration Law’, Atlantic, 10 January 2017.
25‘Stephen Miller, the Powerful Survivor on the President’s Right Flank’, quoted in New York Times, 9 October 2017.
26Charlotte Observer, Charlotte, NC, 19 September 1916.
27New York Times, 26 September 1916.
CODA
1See for example: Peggy Noonan, ‘What’s Become of the American Dream?’, Wall Street Journal, 6 April 2017.
2Dorothy Thompson, ‘Who Goes Nazi?’, Harper’s, August 1941.