Age 18, Stanford University Class: “The American Wilderness”
The first settlers of the New World felt that it was their duty to transform the worthless wilderness into a productive landscape fit for Christian souls to live in. They did not regard it as another Eden, for that would have involved peaceful coexistence with the land in its original state. Rather, they saw in America their Promised land—a wilderness to subdue according to God’s wishes, as the Israelites had conquered Canaan. The Puritans believed devoutly that bringing God and agriculture to the evil wilderness would help redeem the sins of mankind, and that they would be rewarded for their toil by bountiful harvests and the Lord’s blessing. Therefore, they fought the land with the doggedness that comes from self-righteousness and were inspired by their success to push more and more into the heart of the land.
As time went on, some of the original Calvinistic fervor abated; however, the war against the wilderness became less of a spiritual matter A new ideal—the pastoral—evolved as an incorporation of the Edenic concepts of a harmonious garden and the Promised Land ideas of a civilized land wrested from the wilderness. Pastoral idealists, such as Jefferson and Crevecoeur, hoped to create a land where civilized ideas could flourish in a natural environment, avoiding both the savagery of pure wilderness and the artificiality of cities and industrial life. The pastoral setting is one of pleasant, cultivated balance—the land is beautiful, yet tamed. Its inhabitants live amicably with nature instead of struggling against it, and while men work, nature provides for all. This idealism figured prominently in many of the social, political and economic ideas of the time. But the American pastoral dream was ultimately suicidal, for it attracted hordes of immigrants, encouraged waste, and was eventually overwhelmed, not by wilderness, but by the very people and civilization who came to create it.