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Updated: June 10, 2025
Besides which, Fannin's little army was of the finest material, being composed mostly of enthusiastic volunteers from Georgia and Alabama; young men, who, like Dare Grant and John Worth, were inspired with the idea of freedom, or the spread of Americanism, or the fanaticism of religious liberty of conscience perhaps, even, with hatred of priestly domination.
There were the patriotism and the Americanism, as much a part of him as the marrow of his bones, and from which sprang all those brilliant headlong letters to the newspapers: those trenchant assaults upon evil-doers in public office, those quixotic efforts to redress wrongs, and those simple and dexterous exposures of this and that, from an absolutely unexpected point of view.
Paris, any Frenchman will tell you, is the capital of intellect; and though this is but one of a hundred things equally flattering to their country which all Frenchmen believe, yet it happens to be true. In some societies it is social rank, in others wealth and fine houses, in others, still, capacity to render service to the state, which makes old men courted and opens doors to the novice. But in Paris it is brains. If you have written a book or painted a picture or discovered a scientific theory, you have at once a reserved seat, as it were, in the social world, and nobody thinks of asking who your father was, or where you live, or what your income may be. With the literary society the political is so closely allied that the two may be said to coincide. There are coteries of course, but there are also neutral grounds on which members of all sets meet in peace and separate in harmony; and especially since the Republic has become firmly established the barriers based upon party differences have tended steadily to disappear. During the Empire some of the cleverest writers, such as Sainte-Beuve and Mérimée and About, were imperialists: now they are all dead or have changed their politics. During this period, too, the intelligent and literary opposition was mostly Orleanistic, but the last seven years have clearly shown not only that the bourgeois monarchy had no roots in the heart of the people, but also that the conservative Republic possesses all its advantages, combined with few of its objectionable qualities. To men like Renan and Laugel, who have been Orleanists all their lives, and who cherish a personal affection for the party, the situation appears melancholy, and the wail of Renan in his last book is sad enough. He is French to the core; supports openly the doctrine, "My country right or wrong;" finds the centralization of the French system, carried to its logical extreme, the ideal government; and hates, above all things, "Americanism." What strikes an Anglo-Saxon as the merest commonplace of healthy politics or intellectual life is in his eyes the most pernicious heresy. We believe that freedom to teach and to write is the only way to discover the truth, and are confident that in the struggle of life which opposing systems must pass through the truth is sure in the end to win. Not so Renan. "The idea that there is a true knowledge, which must be taught, protected, patronized by the state, to the exclusion of false knowledge, is losing ground one of the results of the general enfeeblement of notions of government." This is bad enough, but the political situation is even worse than the moral and intellectual; for M. Renan finds that France has "preferred the democratic programme, according to which the state, composed of the agglomeration of individuals, having no other object than the happiness of these individuals as they themselves understand it, gives up all notion of initiative above their feelings and ideas. The consequence of such a state of things is the pursuit of prosperity and liberty, the destruction of whatever remains of the spirit of class, weakening of the power of the state. Individuals and the subordinate groups of the state, such as the county and the township, will prosper under such a régime; but it is to be feared that the nation, the country France will lose every day something of its authority and its strong cohesion. The period which we are entering upon will be one of liberty
Wilson, and a third fears labor, you may be able to unite them if you can find some symbol which is the antithesis of what they all hate. Suppose that symbol is Americanism.
Grieg the Norwegian writes Arabian music; and, to cap the climax, we have here in America been offered a pattern for an 'American' national musical costume by the Bohemian Dvorak though what the Negro melodies have to do with Americanism in art still remains a mystery. But the means of 'creating' a national music to which I have alluded are childish.
In fact, there are those actually engaged to-day in the work of Americanization, men at the top of the movement, who sadly need a better conception of true Americanism. An excellent illustration of this came to my knowledge when I attended a large Americanization Conference in Washington.
It intensified him in his dear-bought Americanism to the point of wishing to commit lese majesty in the teeth of some local dignitaries who had snubbed him, and who seemed to enjoy putting our eagle to shame in his person; there was something like the bird of his step-country in Stoller's pale eyes and huge beak.
Lang brought my somewhat desultory discussion very neatly to a point. He admitted that we habitually use "Americanism" as a term of reproach; "but," he asked, "who is reproached? We say 'needlessly' when our language already possesses a consecrated equivalent for the word or idiom." In the first place, one has to remark that many English critics are far from accepting Mr.
Oldfield is a respectable solicitor, and Wheeler is a sharp country practitioner; and to use my favorite Americanism you feel like fighting with a blunt knife against a sharp one." "That is my feeling, sir, and it drives me almost wild sometimes."
It passes over geographical lines, transcends race prejudice, and has even proved itself mightier than the Fourth of July, spread-eagle Americanism of our forefathers. The French socialist working-men and the German socialist working-men forget Alsace and Lorraine, and, when war threatens, pass resolutions declaring that as working-men and comrades they have no quarrel with each other.
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