The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation

The American Revolution refers to a series of events that resulted in the independence of the Thirteen Colonies from British colonial rule and eventually led to the formation of the United States of America. The need for independence was often framed as a fight for freedom against British tyranny by pamphleteers like Thomas Paine. One of the Revolution’s central events was the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence, which Cullen describes as the key document of the American Dream.

This term describes the movement for Black equality in America that took place throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the movement’s major events include Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of a city bus in 1955 (which historians often cite as the official start of the movement) and Martin Luther King Jr’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. One of the achievements of the civil rights movement was to debunk the “separate but equal” legal analysis of the infamous Plessy v Ferguson Supreme Court case, which underwrote Jim Crow segregation laws.

A theological concept associated with Calvinism and the Puritans, the Covenant of Grace is both a guarantee of eternal life for those whom God selects and a source of anxiety for believers who never truly know if they’ve been selected. For the Puritans and many modern Calvinists, the Covenant of Grace is tied to the idea of predestination, in which God has already selected those to receive eternal life. Although good works and success on Earth are technically no guarantee of eternal life, Puritans developed the idea of preparationism, which reduced anxiety by offering steps one could take to prepare to receive the gift of eternal life.

Signed during the American Revolution on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence is a pronouncement of the sovereign status of the Thirteen Colonies in relation to Britain and remains one of American history’s most influential documents. The Declaration contains the lines “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” To some extent, this statement from the Declaration underwrites all versions of the American Dream.

This phrase refers to true equality among people, meaning that all individuals in a society are similarly well-off, can afford similar things, can live in comparable housing, and have the same rights. Ideologically right-wing politicians have traditionally denounced this form of equality as socialism or communism, and they instead promote equality of opportunity as the appropriate form of equality among individuals.

This phrase refers to the idea that all individuals in a society have access to the same means of achieving success and can gain this success if they work hard for it (or to the desire that this condition should exist). Civil rights activists criticize equality of opportunity because it fails to account for past injustices that make it more difficult for historically oppressed groups like Black Americans and women to succeed in America despite working as hard as—or harder than—their white male counterparts.

This term refers to a group of influential American men, including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who agitated for American independence from Britain and established the bases for independent US rule, including the adoption of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers have a legendary status in American culture. According to Cullen, freedom was their American Dream.

Pickfair was the mansion and estate of Hollywood celebrity power couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. It gained legendary status in American popular life in the 1920s as a hotspot for important people and prefigured modern celebrity culture. This book refers to Pickfair to represent the American Dream of the Good Life in both its glamorous appeal and its fleeting hollowness.

The adherents of this form of Protestantism, Puritans, tried to correct perceived corruption in the beliefs and practices of the Church of England by simplifying the faith and holding to strict moral principles. In the modern day, Puritanism often refers to prudishness and religious intolerance, which isn’t a wholly incorrect descriptor of the Puritans. They fled England because of religious persecution and made a home in America, where their beliefs and actions continue to reverberate in political discourse and popular culture today.