The "American Dream" is a phrase referring to the national ethos of the United States: that every person has the freedom and opportunity to succeed and attain a better life. The tenets of the American Dream originate from the Declaration of Independence, which states "all men are created equal", and have an inalienable right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". The Preamble to the Constitution states similarly that the Constitution's purpose is to, in part, "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity".
The phrase was popularized by James Truslow Adams during the Great Depression in 1931; Adams defines it as
However, the term has evolved over time to have different connotations. Originally, the emphasis was on democracy, liberty, and equality, but more recently has been on achieving success, which is typically exemplified by attaining material wealth as well as upward social mobility.
There is some evidence that in recent decades, social mobility in the United States has declined and income inequality has risen. Alt URL Social mobility is lower in the US than in many European countries, especially the Nordic countries."Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs" | By JASON DePARLE | January 4, 2012 Despite this, many Americans are likely to believe they have a better chance of social mobility than that of the Europeans. However, recent empirical research on public opinion has found that belief in the "American Dream" has significantly declined, decreasing most sharply among the young adults.
Some critics have said that the dominant culture in America focuses on materialism and consumerism, or puts blame on the individual for failing to achieve success. Others have said that the labor movement is significant for delivering on the American Dream and building the middle class, yet in 2024 only 10% of American workers were members of a labor union, down from 20% in 1983. The American Dream has also been said to be tied to American exceptionalism and does not acknowledge the hardships many Americans have faced in regards to American slavery, Native American genocide, their legacies, and other examples of discriminatory violence.
History
The meaning of the American Dream has changed over the course of history, and includes both personal components such as home ownership and upward mobility as well as a global vision for cultural hegemony and diplomacy.
18th century The American Dream originated in colonial mystique regarding frontier life. As John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, the colonial Governor of Virginia, notes in 1774, the Americans "for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled". He adds "if they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west".Lord Dunmore to Lord Dartmouth, December 24, 1774, quoted in John Miller, Origins of the American Revolution (1944) p. 77
The 18th century provided Americans with new sources of wealth and new means of travel. When looking at immigration in history, it is important to consider the different experiences with respect to gender and race. Often, tensions between economic and political agendas come into play. After 1776, the United States became a significant part of the global economy. This paragraph highlights the complex relationships between global integration and American history:
These complicated transnational networks themselves are not the only story. Along with global integration went attempts to assert national distinctiveness amid growing global competition. Americans conceived of and responded to these pressures by striving to create national economic independence because they wanted to maintain political and social independence. Thus there was tension between the economic imperatives of global integration, and national political debates and economic agendas - such as the enhancement of national security through a strong industrial and financial base.
19th century Many well-educated Germans who fled the failed 1848 revolution found the United States more politically free than their homeland, which they believed to be a hierarchical and aristocratic society that determined the ceiling for their aspirations. One of them said:
The German emigrant comes into a country free from the despotism, privileged orders and monopolies, intolerable taxes, and constraints in matters of belief and conscience. Everyone can travel and settle wherever he pleases. No passport is demanded, no police mingles in his affairs or hinders his movements ... Fidelity and merit are the only sources of honor here. The rich stand on the same footing as the poor; the scholar is not a mug above the most humble mechanics; no German ought to be ashamed to pursue any occupation ... [In America] wealth and possession of real estate confer not the least political right on its owner above what the poorest citizen has. Nor are there nobility, privileged orders, or standing armies to weaken the physical and moral power of the people, nor are there swarms of public functionaries to devour in idleness credit for. Above all, there are no princes and corrupt courts representing the so-called divine 'right of birth'. In such a country the talents, energy and perseverance of a person ... have far greater opportunity to display than in monarchies.F. W. Bogen, The German in America (Boston, 1851), quoted in Stephen Ozment, A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People (2004) pp. 170–71
The discovery of gold in California in 1849 brought in a hundred thousand men looking for their fortune overnight—and a few did find it. Thus was born the California Dream of instant success. Historian H. W. Brands notes that in the years after the Gold Rush, the California Dream spread across the nation:
The old American Dream ... was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard"... of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck. [This] golden dream ... became a prominent part of the American psyche only after Sutter's Mill.H. W. Brands, The age of gold: the California Gold Rush and the new American dream (2003) p. 442.
Historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 advanced the Frontier Thesis, under which American democracy and the American Dream were formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process. He also stressed results; especially that American democracy was the primary result, along with egalitarianism, a lack of interest in high culture, and violence. "American democracy was born of no theorist's dream; it was not carried in the Susan Constant to Virginia, nor in the Mayflower to Plymouth. It came out of the American forest, and it gained new strength each time it touched a new frontier," said Turner.
In Turner's thesis, the American frontier established liberty by releasing Americans from European mindsets and eroding old, dysfunctional customs. The frontier had no need for standing armies, established churches, aristocrats or nobles, nor for landed gentry who controlled most of the land and charged heavy rents. Frontier land was free for the taking. Turner first announced his thesis in a paper entitled "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893 in Chicago. He won wide acclaim among historians and intellectuals. Turner elaborated on the theme in his advanced history lectures and in a series of essays published over the next 25 years, published along with his initial paper as The Frontier in American History.Turner, The Frontier in American History (1920) chapter 1 Turner's emphasis on the importance of the frontier in shaping American character influenced the interpretation found in thousands of scholarly histories. By the time Turner died in 1932, 60% of the leading history departments in the U.S. were teaching courses in frontier history along Turnerian lines.
20th century From out of the darkest years of the Great Depression, freelance writer James Truslow Adams popularized the phrase "American Dream" in his 1931 book Epic of America:
Adams contends that extreme wealth inequality was among the worst enemies of the American Dream and states:
He states that the American institution that best exemplifies the American dream is the Library of Congress; he contrasts it with European libraries of the time, which restricts access to many of their works, and he argues that the Library, as an institution funded by and meant to uphold democracy, is an example of democratic government's ability to uplift and equalize the people that it rules over and is ruled by in order to "save itself" from a takeover by oligarchic forces. In Adams' view the Library offers an opportunity for the whole nation to come together in thoughtful pursuit of a common good, which he claims needs to be "carried out in all departments of our national life" in order to make the American Dream a reality.
Martin Luther King Jr., in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963), roots the civil rights movement in the African-American quest for the American Dream:Quoted in James T. Kloppenberg, The Virtues of Liberalism (1998). p. 147
We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands ... when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Literature The concept of the American Dream has been used in popular discourse, and scholars have traced its use in American literature ranging from the Autobiography of Benjamin FranklinJ. A. Leo Lemay, "Franklin's Autobiography and the American Dream", in J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M. Zall, eds. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (Norton Critical Editions, 1986) pp. 349–360 to Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), Willa Cather's My Ántonia,James E. Miller, Jr., "My Antonia and the American Dream" Prairie Schooner 48, no. 2 (Summer 1974) pp. 112–123. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925), Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977).Harold Bloom and Blake Hobby, eds. The American Dream (2009) Other writers who use the American Dream theme include Hunter S. Thompson, Edward Albee,Nicholas Canaday, Jr., "Albee's The American Dream and the Existential Vacuum". South Central Bulletin Vol. 26, No. 4 (Winter 1966) pp. 28–34 John Steinbeck,Hayley Haugen, ed., The American Dream in John Steinbeck's of Mice and Men (2010) Langston Hughes,Lloyd W. Brown, "The American Dream and the Legacy of Revolution in the Poetry of Langston Hughes" Studies in Black Literature (Spring 1976) pp. 16–18. and Giannina Braschi.
In 2006, Dr. Guiyou Huang from St. Thomas University in Florida wrote a paper regarding the American Dream as a recurring theme in the fiction of Asian Americans.Guiyou Huang, The Columbia guide to Asian American literature since 1945 (2006), pp 44, 67, 85, 94.
American ideals