EARLY FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICA   2400w

According to an old New England legend recorded in Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” any visitor to the famous orator’s grave in Marshfield can awaken him from death by calling out his name – but had best be prepared to answer Webster’s questions about the state of the Union, or see him rise up from the ground to put things right. [1] As a student at Maine’s Fryeburg Academy in 1990, the grim gaze of Daniel Webster was all-too-familiar to me, as the portrait of our most renowned former headmaster[2] glared down from the wall of my senior history classroom. The legend of the Devil and Daniel Webster was on my mind as I read the first five chapters of Understanding the American Promise. The story of the early European colonies in North America made me think of Jabez Stone, the harried New England farmer who trades his soul to escape a life of poverty and hardship in Benét’s tale.[3] The three major regions of colonial settlement in North America developed along different lines, but all three involved the embrace of prosperity at any cost – including increasing