se,
as distinct from the colonial American of his time.

After all, what is it to be an American? Surely it does not consist in
the number of generations merely which separate the individual from
his forefathers who first settled here. Washington was fourth in
descent from the first American of his name, while Lincoln was in
the sixth generation. This difference certainly constitutes no real
distinction. There are people to-day, not many luckily, whose families
have been here for two hundred and fifty years, and who are as utterly
un-American as it is possible to be, while there are others, whose
fathers were immigrants, who are as intensely American as any one can
desire or imagine. In a new country, peopled in two hundred and fifty
years by immigrants from the Old World and their descendants, the
process of Americanization is not limited by any hard and fast rules
as to time and generations, but is altogether a matter of individual
and race temperament. The production of the well-defined American
types and of the fixed national characteristics which now exist has
been going on during all that period, but in any special instance the
type to which a given man belongs must be settled by special study and
examination.

Washington belonged to the English-speaking race. So did Lincoln. Both
sprang from the splendid stock which was formed during centuries from
a mixture of the Celtic, Teutonic, Scandinavian, and Norman peoples,
and which is known to the world as English. Both, so far as we can
tell, had nothing but English blood, as it would be commonly called,
in their veins, and both were of that part of the English race which
emigrated to America, where it has been the principal factor in the
development of the new people called Americans. They were men of
English race, modified and changed in the fourth and sixth generations
by the new country, the new conditions, and the new life, and by the
contact and admixture of other races. Lincoln, a very great man, one
who has reached "immortal fame," was clearly an American of a type
that the Old World cannot show, or at least has not produced. The idea
of many persons in regard to Washington seems to be, that he was a
great man of a type which the Old World, or, to be more exact, which
England, had produced. One hears it often said that Washington was
simply an American Hampden. Such a comparison is an easy method of
description, nothing more. Hampden is memorable among men,