Campus CrossWalk Magazine: 2004 Fall Issue -- Defining "American": A Review

: “Webster’s life was not about a dictionary. It was about creating a new nation--the United States of America--and making everyone in America an American.”

That is how Harlow Giles Unger concludes his biography of America’s great teacher, statesman, editor, author, lexicographer and patriot, Noah Webster (1758-1843).

Noah was born in 1758, when America was by no means united in its culture, language, values, or political institutions. Almost since the Mayflower, earnest Puritans and mercenary materialists lived side by side. Indians, treated kindly by some and cruelly by others, added to this diversity. As centuries passed, colonists came from far and wide, forging a country that consisted of competing groups that spoke various dialects of English, German, French, Dutch and other languages. Values and virtues varied dramatically across the rancorous colonial landscape.

Webster was raised on a Connecticut farm in a close knit family with deep Mayflower roots. At age eighteen, in 1776 with war looming large, Webster and other Yale students heard an emotional address from professor Timothy Dwight in which they were charged to go out and lay “the foundations of American greatness.” Young Noah took this to heart. His lifelong passion was to bring unity out of national and cultural diversity in America.

After graduating, Noah turned to teaching at a time when schoolhouses often crammed up to seventy children in one room with no desks, poor books (all printed in England), and untrained teachers. In 1783, Webster wrote his own textbook: A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, or the Blue-backed Speller. To this day, it remains the best selling book, written in English, of all-time, selling over 100 million copies even into the 1900s. It was Webster’s declaration of American cultural independence and it gained a monopoly in classrooms for over a century. It changed the course of education in America. No other book besides the Bible would reach as many Americans and no other peaceful resource did more to unite this country.

Webster’s Speller taught children to embrace their young nation and her heroes. It enabled millions of children of different nationalities, ethnicities, language groups, religions, and political persuasions to share a common language, identity and cause as Americans. It also taught children geography, politics, economics and virtue. It offered moral wisdom too. Here is one rather famous line; “He that lies down with dogs must rise up with fleas."

By age 27, Webster had graduated from Yale, taught school, established a school, written a classic grammar and speller, met most of our nation’s founding fathers, and written a pamphlet that influenced the formation of the U.S. Constitution. His talents were many. During a promotional book tour for his Speller, he found time to lead a choir in Baltimore that greatly enriched the church life of that city.

In 1789, he married Rebecca Greenleaf who bore him eight children. He loved children visibly. In fact, his commitment as a schoolmaster, author and reformer rose out of his love for children. In 1787, he wrote, “The only practicable method to reform mankind is to begin with children.”

Webster’s most famous accomplishment was his huge dictionary. It’s very name reveals his patriotic heart: “An American Dictionary of the English Language“ (1828). He began this monumental task of standardizing how Americans would spell, use and pronounce words at age 43 and finished it 27 years later. It contained 70,000 words, leaving out obscenities and profanities. Thanks to Noah, spellings like “colour” and musick are obsolete. It was the last time in history such a task would be attempted and completed as a one-man job.

Webster once said: "The lexicographer's business is to search for truth." To this end, he blended scholarship with faith. Listen to part of his definition for the word ‘Indebted:’ “We are indebted to our parents for their care of us in infancy and in youth; we are indebted to God for life; we are indebted to the Christian religion for many of the advantages and much of the refinement of modern times.” His definition of the word ‘Happy’ also pointed to God; it was ”peace of mind in the favor of God.” Under ‘Love,’ he wrote, “The love of God is the first duty of man.” His use of the word ‘Instruct’ is telling: “The first duty of parents is to instruct their children in the principles of religion and morality.”

In his lifetime, he studied 26 different languages, mastered 12 of them and began the scientific study of etymology. He revolutionized education, unified our culture around the English language, initiated copyright laws, fought for the abolition of slavery and the increased education of women, and he helped shape the abiding identity that came with the title; American.

In the end, no American did more than Webster to eradicate illiteracy. He thought illiteracy was tyranny’s greatest weapon--more effective than prison cells, torture or murder. Beyond that, he changed and unified the language itself in a time when diverse dialects, spellings and pronunciations were rampant.

Today, some lexicographers are already planting radical new deconstructed definitions of marriage and family in new dictionary editions. Webster, quite a family man, would not be amused.

Also, modern multi-cultural activists have still not managed to reverse the unifying work of one devoted lexicographer; Noah Webster. If he had been a multi-culturalist in today‘s fashion, the United States of America would never have reached the level of cultural unity it did in Noah’s lifetime. While Lincoln is known for restoring the union, Webster was among those most instrumental in forging that union in the first place. In 1785, he wrote, “We ought not to consider ourselves as inhabitants of a particular state only; but as Americans.”