The American Character: Forty Lives that Define Our National Spirit

Introduction

What does it mean to be an American? Of course, it means you are a citizen of the United States of America, either because your parents are American citizens, you were born here, or you’ve immigrated here from another country. We often hear people proclaim themselves proud to be an American. But what is it about this country and its history that make us feel proud?

While many nations can trace their history back further than we can, America is actually the oldest continuous democracy on the planet—the only one founded before 1800. Today, the concept of democracy, the idea that the government should be elected by and work for its citizens, is entirely normal. This wasn’t always the case. At our founding, it was a controversial and innovative idea. It is a testament to the extraordinary power of the American experiment that democracy has gone from being a radical idea to a normal one.

America has inspired more freedom in more places than ever before; that is a reason to be proud. By encouraging hard work and rewarding success, America is home to unprecedented wealth. Today, Americans are worth over $130 trillion, an unrivaled sum. We have a history of innovation and invention from airplanes to rocket ships and smart phones to search engines.

Of course, these successes were not immediate or uninterrupted. America has faced hardship and challenge. Initially, our call for freedom excluded slaves. It took nearly ninety years after our founding to end the horror of slavery. Over one hundred thousand Americans gave their lives to free the slaves and preserve the union during the Civil War. The price for freedom is often very high. We have suffered recessions and depressions where millions have lost their jobs and many businesses failed. But from the depths of despair, we have always bounced back.

That is the story of America. It is our unyielding pursuit for freedom, liberty, and providing a better life for the next generation, that define us. It is our belief in America that propels us to greater heights and individual acts of bravery.

In 1776, it was the belief in these ideas that led fifty-six men to sign the Declaration of Independence, an act that instantly made them outlaws against the British Empire, the largest in the history of the world.

In 1861, it led over two million men to risk their life to preserve the American Union and end slavery.

In 1941, facing the shock of Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the nation rallied to join World War II in the largest and quickest military buildup in history. Within three years, American troops were storming the beaches of Normandy, risking their lives not to conquer Europe but to free it from Nazi tyranny.

In the 1960s, it led countless black Americans to risk their safety to protest segregation and unjust laws and to fight for racial equality.

In 2001, it led hundreds of New York firefighters and police officers to run into the burning World Trade Center on 9/11, risking and sacrificing their own lives to save innocent Americans in the most awful terrorist attack our nation has ever suffered.

This book will help you better understand pivotal moments in American history, our nation’s impact on the rest of the world, and why so many feel so proud to be a citizen of this nation. It will do so by exploring a little bit about forty extraordinary Americans, some you know and some you may not. These forty Americans are exemplary figures of the eight defining traits of America: resilience, daring, faith, fairness, sacrifice, drive, industriousness, and innovativeness. Of course, these forty individuals represent a small subset of Americans, and there are many inspiring, influential Americans from Frederick Douglas to Ronald Reagan, who exhibited these traits in their own life, not to mention the countless citizens who make America work and move forward each and every day.

No book could cover the life story of every consequential American; there are far too many. Still, by understanding how each of these forty icons exemplified these traits (five stories for each) through specific decisions they made or actions they took in their life, you will better understand the values America stands for and how this nation has achieved what it has over the course of its history. By living these ideals in your life, you can play your part in ensuring that America’s best days lie ahead.

Chapter 1:

Resilience

George Washington

General and President

February 22, 1732 — December 14, 1799

It is only natural that we begin our study of great Americans with George Washington. He became our first president (from 1789–1797) after having successfully overseen victory in the American Revolution. While there were many transformational leaders among our founding fathers, Washington stands at the front of the pack as the father of our nation—the man we consistently turned to from 1775–1789 to lead us from our Declaration of Independence to the ratification of our Constitution.

We might think of Washington today as a man with a golden touch who went from success to success, but that wasn’t the case. Before the American Revolution, Washington served as an officer in the British Provincial Militia. In the 1750s, tensions between the world’s two leading empires, France and Britain, were steadily rising, culminating in the Seven Years’ War. In North America, the conflict was known as the French and Indian War, as French Colonies and their Native American allies fought British Colonies and their own Native American allies. As a result of this conflict, France would turn over territory east of the Mississippi to Britain and Louisiana to Spain.

As this conflict was flaring up, Washington was a lieutenant colonel, making him second in command of three hundred Virginia troops. Ohio Country, which spanned the future state of Ohio as well as portions of Western Pennsylvania, was a key disputed territory between the powers. Washington led one hundred fifty men from Virginia to assess the situation there. At the battle of Jumonville on May 28, 1754, the first battle of the conflict, Washington’s forces surprised the fifty Canadian and Native American soldiers, resulting in a quick and total victory.

Following this victory, Washington was promoted to Colonel with the whole of the Virginia regiment as well as one hundred troops from South Carolina joining him at Fort Necessity. All appeared to being going well for Washington. Upon his promotion, Washington began to buttress his position in the Ohio River Country while housing his military supplies at Fort Necessity.

Amid reports of five hundred to six hundred French-allied soldiers amassing in the region, Washington retreated to the Fort and lost the support of his Native American allies, further imperiling his situation. While this was ongoing, Washington’s troops worked feverishly to widen the main road through the wilderness to Red Stone Creek to make it easier for British supplies and artillery to move through the region. This proved to be a significant miscalculation, as it made it easier for the French regiment to advance by using this very same road.

By July 3, 1754, the French forces, under the leadership of Louis Coulon, were within sight of Fort Necessity. Over the previous five weeks, Washington’s forces had worked through most of their supplies. Washington knew he could not hold off a siege for very long, so he ordered his entire force to charge across the open field to force out Coulon’s forces from the woods. While the initial attack worked, many of Washington’s forces retreated into the Fort as the French returned fire, leaving him and his men greatly outnumbered. This forced Washington to accept their terms of surrender, abandon the fort, and return with his men to Virginia.

This would be the first of several failures Washington was involved in during the French and Indian War. In 1755, he was a senior aide to British Major General Edward Braddock on his expedition to reclaim Fort Duquesne in the Ohio Country. Washington warned that Braddock’s insistence on using standard British tactics of fighting in open fields as gentlemen was unwise given how the French forces launched sneak attacks from the woods—a tactic Washington would later emulate when commanding the revolutionary Continental Army. Sure enough, at the Battle of the Monongahela, Braddock and Washington suffered a stinging defeat with five hundred of their one thousand five hundred troops killed, forcing a retreat.

In 1758, during the Forbes Expedition to reclaim Fort Duquesne, Washington’s advice to General John Forbes was ignored. Shortly thereafter, his troops were involved in a friendly-fire incident, fighting other British troops whom they had thought were French. And so following these setbacks, in December of 1758 at the age of twenty-six, Washington retired.

During the French and Indian war, Washington was involved in three major failures. While poor supplies and the refusal of his commanding officer to heed his advice played key roles, many men would lack the self-confidence to involve themselves in military affairs in the future. Fortunately for America, Washington was no such man.

In 1775, as the thirteen colonies began to contemplate declaring their independence from the British Empire, our founding fathers turned to George Washington to lead the Continental Army as its Commander in Chief. The beginning of the war was challenging for Washington, whose troops lost an ill-fated attempt at invading Canada. His forces fell by over half to ten thousand by early 1776 as short-term enlistments expired and soldiers returned home.

As the Declaration of Independence was being signed in Philadelphia, British troops were amassing in New York City in the hope that taking this critical port city could end the rebellion. By this time, Washington had rebuilt his troop strength to twenty thousand, still well short of British General William Howe’s thirty-two thousand men. As Howe’s forces approached Washington on Long Island, Washington overruled his generals, believing the British only had eight thousand men based upon intelligence reports. The Continental Army, surprisingly outnumbered, suffered a bruising defeat and the loss of one thousand five hundred men to just four hundred for the British. On August 30, in the dark of night, his forces fled to Manhattan Island. Here, the Colonies suffered another defeat at Fort Washington, eventually sending Washington retreating through New Jersey. Even worse, his army of twenty thousand had been depleted to five thousand four hundred troops in just a few months of fighting.

Washington, who had faced defeat in the French and Indian War just two decades earlier was once again facing defeat after a disastrous start to the American Revolution. However, not only did Washington press on, he had also learned from his past losses. In the French and Indian War, the British often lost because they insisted on traditional open-field fighting tactics rather than launching sneak attacks. Outgunned and outnumbered, Washington’s forces deployed a similar strategy. He did this most famously when he crossed the Delaware River on Christmas 1776 and attacked the complacent British forces in Trenton. He won a quick victory, followed by another in Princeton, before settling into his winter headquarters in Morristown, New Jersey.

These victories, coming on the heels of the loss of New York, made clear that the colonies could not quickly be beaten into submission by the British Empire. The army was ragtag, but in Washington, they had a leader who would not be dismayed by defeats. He would press forward relentlessly and adapt strategies as required.

The Continental Army fought on, and by the end of 1777, its numbers under Washington had doubled back to eleven thousand from five thousand four hundred just eighteen months prior. In 1778, France allied with the colonies, giving America further momentum in its war for independence. The war would continue for some time, until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, recognizing the United States of America as a new and free country. Washington resigned his leadership of the Continental Army—a post he held for over eight years—having defeated the largest empire in world history.

Having accomplished his mission, Washington intended to retire into private life. However, after being asked multiple times, Washington agreed to attend the 1787 Constitutional Convention where the US Constitution was drafted with Washington’s endorsement. Shortly thereafter, in 1789, George Washington was unanimously elected President of the United States.

As a young man, Washington often faced defeat on the battlefield. It would have been easy to retire to private life on his Mount Vernon estate. He gave up this life to lead the fight for independence, instantly making him an outlaw and traitor in the eyes of the British Empire. In the face of early defeats against a larger and better trained British army, he could have sued for peace and abandoned the effort. Instead, he adapted, learning lessons from his failures, and won small victories that built upon each other. Finally, when his nation needed him once more, he rose to the occasion to oversee the implementation of the US Constitution and serve as America’s first president.

Without Washington’s resilience, America might not exist today. Washington’s fortitude has made him the quintessential American: rising to the occasion, undeterred by past failure, and growing back stronger each and every time.

In 1797, Washington made one last consequential decision, choosing to retire rather than serve a third term as president. Democracies and republics are most fragile in their infancy, and Washington was so popular that he could have been president for life—functionally America’s king. Instead, he willingly handed over power to his successor, John Adams. Washington’s retirement after two terms became one of the most important precedents in American history with only one president, Franklin Roosevelt, serving a third term. Rather than let power corrupt him, Washington stayed true to his principles and ensured America’s young republic would live on. For this, he is not just the quintessential American but perhaps the greatest.

Katharine Hepburn

Film Actress

May 12, 1907 — June 29, 2003

Katharine Hepburn was the greatest actress of Hollywood’s Golden Era and perhaps in all of cinema’s history, boasting a career that spanned over fifty years. Receiving Academy Award nominations in five separate decades, her four wins for Best Actress are the most by any actor or actress, and she won about every award an actress could. In a life filled with such tremendous success, one could falsely assume that it was smooth sailing for her. In