3.10 - Developing an American Identity

A New National Culture

Why It Developed: Before the Revolution, most colonists saw themselves as British subjects and as Virginians or New Yorkers. Fighting a long war together, serving side by side in the Continental Army, and building a new government gave people from different states a shared story and shared heroes.

National Symbols: Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes flag in 1777 and the Great Seal in 1782, with the motto E Pluribus Unum ("Out of many, one"). Americans celebrated the Fourth of July with parades and toasts, and George Washington became a national hero.

Republican Values: Americans borrowed symbols from the ancient Roman Republic to show their commitment to civic virtue. Washington was praised as a modern Cincinnatus, the Roman leader who gave up power and went back to his farm, because he resigned command of the army in 1783 instead of seizing power.

An American Language: Noah Webster's spelling book (1783), known as the "blue-backed speller," taught generations of children to read. Webster wanted the new nation to have its own language and schoolbooks free of British influence, and his later dictionaries pushed American spellings like "color" and "center."

Religion: After independence, states began separating church and state (see 3.5), and churches organized as American bodies separate from their British parents. Black Americans built their own churches, since white churches often seated them apart. Gowan Pamphlet became the first known ordained Black Baptist preacher (1772) and led a Baptist church in Williamsburg, Virginia, and in Philadelphia, Richard Allen founded Bethel Church (1794), which grew into the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.

John Trumbull: A Continental Army officer who briefly served as one of Washington's aides, he painted the Revolution's great scenes, like The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker's Hill and Declaration of Independence, giving the new nation a shared story.
Charles Willson Peale: He painted Washington, Franklin, and other Revolutionary leaders again and again, and his Philadelphia museum displayed their portraits alongside natural history exhibits, celebrating American leaders and American science.
Gilbert Stuart: His 1796 portraits of Washington became the standard image of the first president, and one of them is the picture on today's one-dollar bill.

J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur: His Letters from an American Farmer (1782) asked "What is an American?" and answered that in America "individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men." This was an ideal, since it left out enslaved Africans and Native Americans.
Phillis Wheatley: An enslaved woman in Boston, she published Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) in London, the first book of poetry by an African American woman.
Mercy Otis Warren: She wrote plays mocking royal officials before the war and later one of the first histories of the Revolution (1805).
Charles Brockden Brown: His novel Wieland (1798), a dark Gothic tale about a family near Philadelphia, is one of the earliest important American novels.

Architecture: The Federal style borrowed columns, domes, and balanced designs from ancient Greece and Rome to link the new republic to the republics of the ancient world.

Virginia State Capitol: Designed by Thomas Jefferson (begun 1785) and modeled on an ancient Roman temple in France, it set a pattern for government buildings across the country.
Washington, D.C.: Pierre L'Enfant's 1791 plan laid out the new capital with wide avenues and the Capitol on a hill, meant to show the greatness of the republic.
First Bank of the United States: Its marble building in Philadelphia, finished in 1797, looked like a classical temple, tying the new national economy to republican ideals.

Continuities: American culture stayed deeply British: Americans spoke English, used English common law, read British books, and followed London fashions. Most were Protestant Christians, as in colonial times, and many still felt more loyal to their state than to the nation.

Regional Differences: The regions that formed in the colonial era (see Unit 2) stayed distinct.

New England: Small farms, fishing, shipbuilding, and trade, with strong Congregational churches and town meetings.
Middle States: The most ethnically and religiously mixed region (English, Dutch, German, Scots-Irish, Quakers, and others), with grain farms and busy port cities like Philadelphia and New York.
South: Plantation farming based on enslaved labor (tobacco, rice, and soon cotton), with a wealthy planter class at the top.
Backcountry: Independent, mostly Scots-Irish and German farmers along the frontier who distrusted coastal elites (see 3.11).

Why It Matters: These regional differences shaped politics, with New England leaning Federalist and the South and West leaning Democratic-Republican (see 3.9), and they fed growing regional divides over slavery (see 3.11).

Who Was Left Out: The new national identity mostly pictured white men. Women, enslaved and free Black Americans, and Native Americans were largely shut out of full citizenship, though many built their own communities and institutions.