T HIS BOOK exhibits, for the first time in American literature, the writings of Americans
for the purpose of defining and illustrating American literary progress in relation
to American intellectual progress. Other books have selected, according to the antholo-
gists' tastes, such selections as are typical of literary currents, or such as are deemed repre-
sentative of a restricted group of authors, or such as are deemed excellent, or such as
describe American life. Here are presented, in addition to an adequate collection of
acknowledged masterpieces, such further materials as will clarify changing American con-
cepts of religion, political independence, democracy, economics, humanitarian striving,
education, and literary theory. Many of the moods of Americans, which found no belle-
tristic record, are represented through selections from so-called sub-literary books, maga-
zines, and newspapers. Our purpose is to make present-day trends of thought and action
understandable through a historical approach. Thus, it has been customary to include in
conventional anthologies much material relating to New England Puritanism and Tran-
scendentalism, but to neglect other equally important strands of religious thinking. To
remedy this defect we have presented items from the Quakers, Deists, Unitarians, Metho-
dists, Roman Catholics, Baptists, and, among others, Humanists. We have given attention
to the foreign- and home-missionary movements, and to the humanitarian activities of
the Church in ameliorating human suffering. These selections, we think, help in interpret-
ing the religious lyrics of Freneau, Bryant, Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, Whitman, Robin-
son, Sandburg, and other poets, for, indeed, what American poet has not been deeply
stirred to write on religious themes? Religion has been central in American life; to neglect
to represent this thought in American literature is to misrepresent our literature.
the changing ideas on the relation between government and the people have been exem-
plified here for the first time. In addition to the usual selections from William Bradford,
from the writers demanding American independence, from Calhoun, from Daniel
Webster, and from Lincoln, we have inserted relevant materials from speeches in Con-
gress, from Supreme Court decisions, and from the writings of such men as Theodore
Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, William E. Borah, Herbert Hoover,
and Robert M. La Follette. Economic problems and suggested solutions clarify American
concepts of business, of governmental regulation of industry, and of the relation between
employer and employee. The attempts at the amelioration of the conditions of the under-
privileged through many social reforms, likewise, are exhibited as a continuous manifes-
tation of the American spirit from Cotton Mather's time to the present. America's interest
in education also is here recorded, in such a book, for the first time. Those writings by
Americans are most significant which discuss current intellectual and social problems,
and with this thought in mind we have chosen our selections.

In accepting or rejecting any item we have asked three questions: First, is the selection

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