The Consequences of Free Land
This was the revolution in which America led the way and it had astounding consequences. The American pioneer did not care for the land—in two senses, for he neither loved it nor took care of it. The European peasant had to nourish the soil before it would, in turn, nourish him and his family; the American did not; he exhausted the soil and left it, as a man unchivalrously leaves an aging wife for a younger; there was so much land available that only an obstinate unadventurous man would not try a hazard of new fortunes. This may be morally reprehensible, but politically it had a satisfactory result: the American farmer exhausted the soil, but did not let the soil exhaust him; so that we established the tradition of waste, but escaped the worse tradition of a stingy, frightened, miserly, peasant class. The more aesthetic American critics of America never quite forgave us for not having peasant arts and crafts, the peasant virtues, the peasant sturdiness and all the rest of the good qualities which go with slavery to the soil.
So the physical definition of America leads to these opening social definitions:
we first destroyed the land-basis of wealth, position and power;
we were the first nation to exhaust and abandon the soil;
we were supremely the great wasters of the world;
we were the first great nation to exist without a peasant class.
From this beginning we can go on to other effects:
our myths grew out of conquest of the land, not out of war against neighboring states;
we created no special rights for the eldest son (as the younger could find more and better land);