Our wars, our independence, our state building, our political democracy, our plasticity with respect to immigration, our mobility of thought, our ardor of initiative, our mildness and our prosperity, all are but incidents or products of this prime historical fact.* * Lecture by J.Franklin Jameson before the Trustees of the Carnegie Institution, at Washington, in 1912, printed in the "History Teacher's Magazine," vol.IV, 1913, p.

5.
It is seldom that one's attention is so caught and held as by the happy suggestion that American interest in land or rather interest in American land--began with the discovery of the continent.

Even a momentary consideration of the subject, however, is sufficient to indicate how important was the desire for land as a motive of colonization.

The foundation of European governmental and social organizations had been laid in feudalism--a system of landholding and service.

And although European states might have lost their original feudal character, and although new classes had arisen, land-holding still remained the basis of social distinction.
One can readily imagine that America would be considered as El Dorado, where one of the rarest commodities as well as one of the most precious possessions was found in almost unlimited quantities that family estates were sought in America and that to the lower classes it seemed as if a heaven were opening on earth.