For National Review this Thanksgiving weekend, I wrote about an obscure American colossus: the 81-foot-tall National Monument to the Forefathers. (There are some pictures at the link if you want to see this 19th-century giant.)
New Englanders in the 1800s embraced a cult of the Pilgrims, portraying them as founders of what would become the United States. In a famous 1820 oration, Daniel Webster called Plymouth “the spot where the first scene of our history was laid.” Virginia’s Jamestown, built by tidewater adventurers, might have been the first English settlement chronologically, but Webster and other New Englanders sought to make Plymouth (and Boston) first in principle.
History’s commemoration here bears the hints of political theory, or at least political apologia. While Webster’s 1820 speech on the Pilgrims celebrated “civil and religious liberty,” it also turned to broader conditions that at once supported such liberties and could also be advanced by them. He argued that the relative economic equality of the Pilgrims laid the groundwork for a democratic society, as the continued diffusion of property was essential for the continuance of republican self-government. To Webster, the Pilgrim project was partly about defending liberty, but it also demanded the promotion of the general welfare, virtue, and religious devotion.
The piece looks at architecture, the Pilgrims (400 years later!), and the role of history as a vehicle for legitimization for a pluralist democracy.
If you can't get enough of the Pilgrims (and who can!?), see also James Panero's reflection on Plymouth Rock for the New Criterion.
