American Manners & Morals [antikvár]

Preface In these pages, we have endeavored to give something more than a catalog of quaint facts about the customs of our ancestors. . Outmoded rituals can make entertaining reading for their own ^ sake, but they can also tell us much about the hopes and aspira- tions of the people who have chosen to live by them. Manners and morals derive, after all, from the system of values men set upon hfe itself. The first Americans, confronted with a vast and intimidating wilderness and an infinity of possibilities both wonderful and terrifying, had barely set sail before their leader, John Winthrop, proposed a new code of conduct to guide them in their enterprise. "The ligamentes of this body . . . are loue. . . . Wee must be knitt together in this worke as one man, wee must entertaine each other in brotherly Affeccion, wee must be willing to abridge our selues of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities, wee must vphold a familiar Commerce together in a meeke-nes, gentlenes, patience and liberallity, wee must dehght in cache other, make others Condicions our owne reioyce together, mourne together, labour, and suffer together, allwayes haueing before our eyes our . . . Community. . . ." Winthrop's "Modell of Christian Charity" worked for a time, but as a code of behavior it was bound to lose its relevance in a land where newness was ever alluring and conditions always changing. Countless other Americans —preachers, jurists, charlatans, social arbiters, philosophers, "scribbling women," and just plain folks —have since left their marks upon our customs, and we have grown from a land of isolated settlements, each living by laws unto itself, into a nation where the manners and morals of different sorts of people are at least widely tolerated if not wholly endorsed. This book describes some of the personalities and events that have helped to bring about this evolution of the American character. In a sense, almost any facet of life can be turned to account in such a study: legislation, entertainments, literature, fashions, attitudes toward sex, social institutions, our pleasures and our pains, all reflect deep-seated ideas of right and wrong. All these ingredients are to be found in the chapters, contemporary writings, and picture portfolios that follow, and certain immutable strains begin to emerge. It is astonishing, for example, to observe how the Puritan ethic has endured. The few hundred New England Puritans 12