iety in
America. So on this stage, broad as the western world, we see these
men of different strains subduing a wilderness and welding its diverse
parts into a great nation, stretching out the eager hand of
exploration for yet more land, bringing with arduous toil the ample
gifts of sea and forest to the townsfolk, hewing out homesteads in the
savage wilderness, laboring faithfully at forge and shipyard and loom,
bartering in the market place, putting the fear of God into their
children and the fear of their own strong right arm into him whosoever
sought to oppress them, be he Red Man with his tomahawk or English
King with his Stamp Act.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: In 1773 and 1774 over thirty thousand came. In the latter
year Benjamin Franklin estimated the population of Pennsylvania at
350,000, of which number one-third was thought to be Scotch-Irish.
John Fiske states that half a million, all told, arrived in the
colonies before 1776, "making not less than one-sixth part of our
population at the time of the Revolution."]

[Footnote 2: John Fiske: _The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America_,
vol. II, p. 351.]

CHAPTER II

THE AMERICAN STOCK

In the history of a word we may frequently find a fragment, sometimes
a large section, of universal history. This is exemplified in the term
American, a name which, in the phrase of George Washington, "must
always exalt the pride of patriotism" and which today is proudly borne
by a hundred million people. There is no obscurity about the origin of
the name America. It was suggested for the New World in 1507 by Martin
Waldseemueller, a German geographer at the French college of Saint-Die.
In that year this savant printed a tract, with a map of the world or
_mappemonde_, recognizing the dubious claims of discovery set up by
Amerigo Vespucci and naming the new continent after him. At first
applied only to South America, the name was afterwards extended to
mean the northern continent as well; and in time the whole New World,
from the Frozen Ocean to the Land of Fire, came to be called America.

Inevitably the people who achieved a preponderating influence in the
new continent came to be called Americans. Today the name American
everywhere signifies belonging to the United States, and a citizen of
that country is called an American. This unquestionably is
geographically anomalous, for the neighbors of the United States, both
north and south, may claim an equal share in