The American Character essays

The American Character essays THE AMERICAN CHARACTER BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR One might ask oneself what that means. The American Character. It sounds glorious, mighty, powerful and whatnot, but how many of us actually know the meaning of such a grand phrase? The American character is an idea. It is how our minds are shaped when we are growing up: what we should be proud of, the values we are supposed to impose onto our children, how we should dress, the way we are expected to think. However, our mentality has not remained the same throughout the history of our country. People change, times change, and as this happens our mentality changes as well. The American character was already developing even before the very first European colonizers set foot on American territory. Tired of the government and oppression, they came looking for freedom, they came looking for a place where no one would tell them what to believe, a place where they could own acres and acres of land and live off the land, or to just be free. It seemed like the perfect place to grow perfect crops in vast extensions of land. Americans soon discovered that the rich soil was great for growing tobacco, corn and cotton, among others. Crops like tobacco and cotton brought sufficient revenue to the landowners; however, these exhausted the soil quickly thus greatly increasing the demand for both land and labor, causing the settlers to once again clash with the Native Americans in the never ending struggle for land. More land required more work and more work required more laborers; indentured servants (servants that came and worked in these plantations for seven years with no pay) did the job at first, but as the demand for land grew, so did the demand for labor. Wealth-thirsty plantations owners soon realized indentured servants just were not enough, and thats when they turned to another solution: slaves. ...