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The Entangled History of “America First” and “The American Dream"

tags: political history, book review, America First

by James Thornton Harris

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/171383

Mr. Harris is an independent historian and a regular contributor to
the History News Network. For more information see
www.JamesThorntonHarris.com.

“America First.”

This simple two-word phrase, which had lain dormant for decades, was
suddenly placed front and center in the 2016 Presidential campaign of
Donald Trump.

For the Trump campaign, unconcerned about historic meanings or
previous connotations, “America First” in 2016 meant higher tariffs, protecting Midwestern manufacturing jobs, trashing NAFTA and turning
away from NATO and other longstanding global alliances.

As Sarah Churchwell explains in her new book, “Behold America,” Trump adopted the phrase as a wedge issue, designed to polarize Americans
along racial and geographic lines and peel off blue-collar Democratic
voters.

There is a great historical irony in his provocative use off the
phrase, because “America First” had first entered the national
political dialogue in 1915 when a progressive Democrat, President
Woodrow Wilson, sought to unify the country during the horrifying
first years of World War I.

Wilson, running for re-election in early 1915, used the phrase to
justify non-intervention in the bloody conflict. In a major political
address, he advocated a carefully calibrated American neutrality.

Wilson proclaimed that “Our whole duty for the present…is summed up in
the motto: America First. Let us think of America before we think of
Europe, in order that America may be fit to be Europe’s friend when
the day of tested friendship comes.”

He added that by remaining neutral, and thinking of “America First,”
the nation was not being ignorant, or self-centered. Instead,
American neutrality meant “sympathy for mankind. It is fairness, it is
good will at bottom. It is impartiality of spirit and judgment.”

So how did we get from that benevolent meaning of “America First” to
its use as a provocative threat by candidate Donald Trump?

Churchwell, professor of American Literature at the University of
London, unravels the complicated history behind the “America First”
and the equally problematic phrase, “the American Dream” in her new
book Behold America.

Churchwell reports that the first written use of the phrase came in
1884, when an Oakland, California newspaper ran “America First and
Always” in the headline above a report on a looming trade war with the British Empire. It fell into disuse until President Wilson
resurrected it in his 1915 re-election campaign.

In April 1917, America declared war on Germany and the concept of a “fair-minded” neutrality vanished. After the World War ended and the Versailles Peace Treaty negotiated in 1919, the phrase “America First” continued to be used, but with new meanings.

For example, Warren Harding used the slogan “Prosper American First”
in his successful 1920 campaign. He called Wilson’s proposed League of Nations treaty a “supreme blunder.” One newspaper, in endorsing him,
cited the fact that Harding would usher in “an era of nationalism,
instead of internationalism.”

According to Churchwell, the massive Harding victory (he won 60 per
cent of the vote) “legitimized” the phrase for many Americans. It was
soon adopted by anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic groups including the
newly resurgent Ku Klux Klan. For these groups, “America First” meant White supremacy and returning the nation to its “Anglo Saxon” or “Nordic” origins, and restricting immigration from Italy and Eastern Europe.

The 1924 President Calvin Coolidge signed the Johnson-Reed Immigration
Act, which fulfilled the hopes of those who saw “America First” as invocation of racial supremacy. The new act severely restricted
immigration from southern and eastern Europe by imposing quotas based
on the 1890 census. It also, in effect, banned immigrants from China
and Japan.

In the 1930s, as the nation descended into the Great Depression,
references to “America First” rapidly declined. In 1940, however, the phrase roared back into national prominence with the founding of the
America First Committee (AFC), which chose aviator Charles Lindbergh
as its spokesman.

The AFC, funded by wealthy businessmen and run primarily by Ivy League
law students, was launched nationwide shortly after Germany conquered
France. The committee claimed 800,000 dues-paying members within its
first year. The AFC vehemently opposed American entry into World War
II and directly attacked President Roosevelt’s aid to Britain. Charles Lindbergh, speaking at rallies across the country, suggested that
American Jews were behind the effort to support Britain because they
were angry at Germany for its vicious anti-Semitic policies.

On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and America entered the
war the next day. The America First Committee collapsed overnight.

While the majority of “Behold America” is devoted to exploring the
tangled evolution of “America First,” Churchwell also examines the
changing meaning of “the American Dream.” Trump, of course, famously declared “The American Dream” is dead in his campaign speeches,
blaming the loss of upward mobility on unfair competition by China and
a “flood” of immigrants.

As Churchwell noted in a recent interview with Smithsonian magazine,
“the American Dream” has always been about economic success, but 100
years ago “the phrase meant the opposite of what it does now.” It was
a “dream of equality, justice and democracy,” not just a vision of a
large house full of expensive possessions.

The author lamented that “that “the American dream isn’t dead…we just have no idea what it means anymore.”

“Behold America” is extensively researched and generally well written, guiding the reader through a century of political dialogue. However,
it is a one-dimensional work dependent on newspaper articles,
editorials and letters to the editor. It is an etymological study of
two specific political phrases, rather than a broader look at
America’s self-image.

Churchwell bases her research exclusively on print sources, citing
hundreds of newspaper articles and handful of novels. She only
mentions one movie: D. W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” (in 1915 it became the first film ever shown in the White House). She also
completely ignores theater, music and radio, despite the fact that
broadcasts reached millions of Americans in their home. She skips over President Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats” on radio and the widely popular weekly political commentary (often openly anti-Semitic) of Detroit’s
Father Coughlin.

She also ignores the motion picture industry. Hollywood had a major
influence on American perceptions of opportunity and social justice.
One only has to think of movies like The Grapes of Wrath, Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington or It’s a Wonderful Lifeto realize how they shaped depictions of the American Dream.

Behold America brushes aside the impact of these newer, influential
media. Perhaps Churchwell’s reliance on print sources is due to her background as a professor of Literature. Her previous books include
Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of the Great
Gatsby.

In the introduction to Behold America, Churchwell notes that “We risk misreading or own moment if we don’t know the historical meanings of expressions we resuscitate or perpetuate.”

This is certainly true and despite the book’s narrow focus, readers interested in American politics will find the book offers important
new context on the contested meanings of “America First” and “The American Dream.”

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/171383

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