Tras-National America

"The early colonists came over with motives no less colonial than the later. They did not come to be assimilated in an American melting pot. They did not come to adopt the culture of the American Indian. They had not the smallest intention of 'giving themselves without reservation' to the new country. They came to get freedom to live as they wanted to. They came to escape from the stifling air and chaos of the old world; they came to make their fortune in a new land."

"It is just this English-Americanconservatism that has been our chief obstacle to social advance. We have needed the new peoples—the order of the German and Scandinavian, the turbulence of the Slav and Hun—to save us from our own stagnation."

This text was very intriguing because the author talked about why people came to America and why it was so important for them to get away from the old world and find peace in the new world.  Immigrants came to America to live however it was they wanted to live like. For example the immigrants that came to practice their own religions freely without anyone telling them couldn't.  So, in no way, shape, or form did the early immigrants want to adapt to the ways of the Native American or melt into their culture. Instead they came with one goal in mind and that was to live freely as they please since they didn't have a ruler telling them exactly what to do anymore. Also, the author talks about how America is today is thanks to the ideas of the different ethnicities that immigrated from the old world to the new.  America would be now where how it is today if it wasn't for all the different kinds of peoples that immigrated here, which in the end, gave different ideals and ways in which America has grown to become today. In other words, if the immigrants of America had only been English, then our government and our ideals would be probably be different today, and there wouldn't be as much diversity as we luckily have now.