The time and lands are devoted to the real,
Make a demand for the ideal;
It has been my ambition for America that she should permit, excite, high ideals.

I shall use the words America and democracy as convertible terms.
The foreign theory is that a man or woman receives rights by grant, demise, or inheritance. The theory of these states is that humanity’s rights belong to every man, every woman, in the inherent nature of things, and cannot be alienated, or if alienated must be brought back and resumed.

To justify God, his divine aggregate, the people—this, I say, is what democracy is for; and this is what our America means, and is doing—may I not say, has done? If not, she means nothing more, and does nothing more, than any other land.

The theory of this republic is, not that the general government is the fountain of all life and power, but that the people are, represented in both the general and state governments.
The Congress convenes for you,
The secretaries act in their bureaus for you, not you here for them,
The president is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him.

What we most need, must always have, is a clear road to freedom. The point with us in this country is the removal of impedimenta, the throwing off of restrictions. If America is not for freedom I do not see what it is for.
At the base of American institutions, we all believe every man born should have a fair chance, move about as he chooses, possess and retain what justly belongs to him. It is the entrance step to all the rest.

To be an American is to accept nothing except what is equally free and eligible to anybody else;
Not any habitan of America is to have one jot less than you or me,
Not any, not the president, is to have one jot more than you or me.

The distinctive genius of the United States is always most in the common people, some invisible spine and great sympathetic to these states, resident only in the identity and character of average people, in their practical life, their physiology, their emotions—the common ways of average men—which is, in fact, America.

Our American superiority and vitality are in the bulk of our people, not in a gentry,
America is not for special types, for the caste, but for the great mass of people,
The people!  the common bulk, the general average horde,
All characters, movements, growths, a few noticed, myriads unnoticed,
The best no sooner than the worst.

The common American mechanic, farmer, sailor, etc. is just as eligible as any to the highest ideal of dignity, knowledge, happiness, and perfection. I sometimes think an independent American workingman is more eligible than any other.

Here all forms of practical labour recognized as honorable,
The vast, surging, hopeful, army of workers,
The youth, the laboring person, the poor person,
The poorest free farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart,
Rivalling all the rest, perhaps outdoing the rest—
You workwomen and workmen of these states,
Having your own divine and strong life,
And all else giving place to men and women like you.

The average of farmers and mechanics everywhere in every respect insures the future of the republic. Good farmers, sailors, mechanics, clerks, citizens—perfect business and social relations—perfect fathers and mothers—if we could only have these, or their approximations, plenty of them, fine and large and sane and generous and patriotic! Of course these are not all America wants, but they are first of all to be provided on a large scale.

I love America, I believe in America, because her belly can hold and digest all—anarchist, socialist, peacemakers, fighters, disturbers or degenerates of whatever sort—hold and digest all, none excluded—not the ignorant, not roughs or laboring persons, even prostitutes. I include all other American robust classes, too. This is what America is for; to justify this is what she means; if not she means nothing.

The federal Mother, seated with more than antique grace,
Calm, just, indulgent to her brood of children, calling them around her,
Regarding the little and the large and the younger and the older with perfect impartiality.
Thou Mother with thy equal brood, to thy immortal breasts,
Thy every daughter, son, endear’d alike, forever equal,
No one rejected, all fully accepted—no one preferred to another;
A nation announcing itself:
I reject none, accept all, then reproduce all in my own forms.

Inextricable lands! the clutch’d together! the passionate ones!
The side by side! the elder and younger brothers!
Each man and woman my neighbor!
Are you really of the whole people?
Do you move in these broad lands as broad as they?
Have you too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality,
To balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes?

America is for one thing only,
America must welcome all—
Chinese, Irish, German, pauper or not, criminal or not—
All, all, without exceptions,
We ought to invite the world through an open door,
Restrict nothing—keep everything open,
No matter what, enlarge the doors,
Become an asylum for all who choose to come.
Send any or all—yes, even the criminals—
We have places for any and all, good places,
Giving to everyone a chance, a new outlook.

America will stand opposed to everything which means restriction—stand against all policies of exclusion,
Knowing it must not question the logic of its hospitality,
America prepares with composure and goodwill for the visitors that have sent word,
Welcoming all immigrants, it rejects none, it permits all—
The proud ships arriving, the voyage at a venture of men, families, goods,
The disembarkation, the groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee,
The copious humanity streaming from every direction toward America,
Incalculable masses of composite precious materials, 
We receive them, we have made preparation, to become the most friendly nation.

See, in my poems, immigrants continually coming and landing,
To all that hitherward come would I welcome  give,
Hereby applying these leaves to the new ones from the hour they unite with the old ones.

I see in America not merely the home of Americans, but the home of the needy and down-kept races of the whole earth. All the lands of the earth make contributions here, the world forwarding its best. How, then, can any man with a heart in his breast begrudge the coming of needy ones to the plentiful storehouse of the New World?
Dare we deny them a home—close the doors in their face—take possession of all and fence it in and then sit down satisfied with our system—convinced that we have solved our problem? I for my part refuse to connect America with such a failure—such a tragedy, for tragedy it would be.

I wonder if our people really believe the Chinese menace our institutions—the industrious, quiet, inoffensive Chinese? Maybe our institutions ain’t no good if they’re as thin-skinned as that.

Old Ireland, the son you love was not really dead,
He is risen again young and strong in another country,
Even while you wept there by the grave,
What you wept for was translated, pass’d from the grave,
The winds favor’d and the sea sail’d it
And now with rosy and new blood,
Moves today in a new country.

As to the Spanish stock of our Southwest, it is certain to me that we do not begin to appreciate the splendor and sterling value of it. No stock shows a grander historic retrospect—grander in religiousness and loyalty, or for patriotism, courage, decorum, gravity, and honor. To the composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts.

Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of many nations,
A home for every race on earth,
The huge composite of all other nations, cast in a fresher and brawnier matrix.
We are sufficient in the variety of ourselves,
Always the free range and diversity.

Yet I announce that the identity of these states is a single identity only—each indeed free, as becomes live states and men, but each adhering to one enclosing general form of politics, manners, talk, personal style, as the plenteous varieties of the race adhere to one physical form. 

I announce the Union more and more compact, indissoluble,
My body no more inevitably united, part to part, and made out of a thousand diverse contributions one identity, any more than my lands are inevitably united and made one identity—
The United States indeed,
Many in one, by all the world contributed.

All nations here—all races are here—a home for every race on earth,
By history’s cycles forwarded, by every nation, language, hither sent.
To the new continent comes the offspring of the rest of the continents to bear offspring,
Those old continents whence we have come to this new continent.

I accept for the roots of this nation no less than all the round globe, history entire, all the generations, all the materials of the past,
(There will come a time, all over America, when nothing will be of more interest than authentic reminiscences of the past.)
Greets the antique the hero new? ’tis but the same—
The heir legitimate, continued ever—proof of the never-broken line.

Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials,
America brings builders, and brings its own styles,
Stands removed, spacious, composite, sound, initiates the true use of precedents,
Does not repel them or the past or what they have produced under their forms,
Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne from the house,
Perceives that it waits a little while in the door, that it was fittest for its days,
That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches,
And that he shall be fittest for his days. 

Ages back, in ghostly millions, frowning there behind us urging,
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared.
On our shores the crowning resultant of those distillations, decantations,
The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years,
The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time’s accumulations,
To justify the past.

Thou America, pleas’d with the native and pleas’d with the foreign, pleas’d with the new and old,
The measur’d faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past, are not for thee,
But grandeurs of thine own.
Lo, where arise three peerless stars,
To be thy natal stars my country—ensemble, evolution, freedom,
Set in the sky of law,
Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thyself.

All I have written is written with reference to the larger America, an America so inclusive, so sufficient, no phase of life, no nationality can escape it. There is that about these assumptions that only the vastness, multiplicity, and vitality of America would seem able to comprehend, to be fit for, and give scope to. The push of its perspective spreads with crampless and flowing breadth and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. 

Encircling all, vast-darting up and wide, is the American soul, with equal hemispheres—
One love, one dilation or pride,
(Cursed is that age or nation that does not realize itself, and esteem itself.)
He only suits these states whose manners favor the audacity and sublime turbulence of the states,
The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless impatience of restraint.
O resistless restless! pioneers! O pioneers!
Swarming and busy, settling and organizing everywhere,
The compactions of humanity, that have been going on over the earth so long,
Now with rosy and new blood, move today in a new country,
With firm and regular step they wend, they never stop.

Here is what moves in magnificent vast masses, carelessly faithful of particulars,
Here the flowing trains, here the crowds, equality, diversity, the soul loves,
The fluid movement of the population, an average unending procession,
Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines.
See, vast trackless spaces,
As in a dream they change, they swiftly fill,
Countless masses debouch upon them,
They are now cover’d with the foremost people, arts, institutions, known.

The land in America is indefinite, infinite—you can call for as much as you want,
Think of it: how little of the land of the United States is cultivated,
How much of it is still utterly untilled.
As you go west there is lots and lots and lots and lots, and still lots beyond lots, of land,
On which men may spread out as they choose,
Land limitless—miles and miles and miles and miles and miles—no end!
The prairies typify America—democracy, freedom, expanse, vista, sweep, magnificence.

America—her clouds, her rivers, her woods, all her origin, purpose, ideals,
The certainty of space, increase, freedom, futurity, the majesty of life—
Let it be reflected in the majesty of each individual, every mechanic, laborer, lawyer, statesman, artist, everyone;
In them these skies and airs, these mountain peaks,
These huge precipitous cliffs, this amplitude, these valleys,
Inhaling and exhaling our limitless air and eligibilities.

Nature exhales; nature’s method is always the method of diffusion—in her winds, skies, streams, all,
Let man exhale, let our America exhale,
America ought to be diffusion—ought to scatter,
To do this is her work.

These American states, strong and healthy and accomplished, shall receive no pleasure from violations of natural models and must not permit them. As the greatest lessons of nature are perhaps the lessons of variety and freedom, the same present the greatest lessons also in New World politics and progress. 
Of a grand and universal nation, perhaps it ought to have morally what nature has physically, the power to take in and assimilate all the human strata, all kinds of experience, and all theories, and whatever happens or occurs, or offers itself, or fortune, or what is call’d misfortune.
The politics of nature—the amplitude, rectitude, impartiality—only such as they are for these states. What is less than they must sooner or later lift off from these states.

Thou Union, with all thy wide geographies, manifold, different, distant, rounded by thee in one,
Embracing, carrying, welcoming all,
Thou too surroundest all; thou, also thou, a world,
Thou globe of globes! thou New, indeed new, spiritual World!
Always the continent of democracy, holding all, fusing, comprehending all,
All eligible to all.

Ours is to be the nation of the cosmos,
Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, tolerating all—
Entire faith and acceptance is the foundation of moral America.

NEXT: AMERICA’S PRESENT EVILS

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