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The very fact that the U.S. was a nation only in name produced a fervent drive to create national symbols that sometimes obscured Jefferson's aspirations. The drive was fueled by waves of immigrants rushing to a virgin continent that offered fabulous opportunities for self-advancement. The gold-rush spirit animated Americanism, the country's unestablished religion. The whole public-school system was aimed at Americanization. Noah Webster's spelling book taught American English to Germans, Poles, Swedes, Italians—and declared that "Europe is grown old in folly, corruption and tyranny." Geography was American, and America was bigger than the universe, the finest, happiest and soon to be the strongest nation on earth. Parson Weems's biography beatified Washington; Fourth of July speeches were gravely heeded. Even arithmetic books instilled patriotism. Symbols burgeoned—Old Glory, the Liberty Bell, the bald eagle, Uncle Sam. Everyone memorized militant songs, such as Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean ("Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue"). And McGuffey readers—hardly a child alive could not recite Longfellow's verse:
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
The symbolism, the national heroes, the sacred founding documents, the optimistic faith in progress—all these unified and inspired millions of uprooted immigrants in an often frighteningly free society. The mood filled a basic human need: never do men so long to belong as when they give up one fatherland for another. Conversely, the U.S. proposition was freedom from orthodoxy. There was not—and is not—any one perfect Americanism. Not in a country that cherishes diversity as a national virtue.
But if diversity is a condition of freedom, it is also a recipe for self-interest—and a patriotism that sometimes reaches no deeper than symbols. Over the years, peacetime patriotism in the U.S. was expressed as a wealth of other emotions; how Americans feel about America is clearly linked to how they feel about themselves functioning in America. Thus in the 19th century every imaginable interest group claimed superior nativity. Businessmen denounced unionists as alien anarchists; each generation of naturalized immigrants scorned each later wave of "foreigners," notably Roman Catholics, victims of outrageous persecution by the nativist Know-Nothings of the 1850s. Just before the Civil War, slavery apologists attributed to themselves the one true Americanism; some Southerners wanted to claim the Stars and Stripes as their own flag.