Classics of American Reform Literature

Abstract

REFORM MAY BE defined broadly effort by words and deeds to change and improve upon existing conditions. In this sense, American reforming zeal is not confined to spasmodic social protest movements or eccentric experiments, but is characteristic of American people generally, whatever their class or sectional interests. For some three centuries they have been enlisted in a permanent revolution dedicated to progress, to social and individual betterment, variously interpreted. The American theme of progress underlying reform was initiated with colonial mission to set up a City on Hill a beacon and example to unregenerate Europe of Reformation's ideal holy commonwealth.2 The collective sense of mission became gradually translated into more secular terms of Liberty, Equality, Prosperity, Civic Virtue. But Americans have continued to act, in words of Logan Pearsall Smith, as if America were more than a country, were a sort of cause . . . which it is dishonorable to desert.3 At same time, after pattern of Puritan jeremiad, they have held it an obligation of citizenship to search social conscience. Thus, conservative James Fenimore Cooper believed that it was the duty of citizen to reform and improve character of his country. Mark Twain, long a hallmark of Americanism, once wrote that the citizen