got beyond the elusive condition of loose talk.

In that most noble poem, the "Commemoration Ode," Mr. Lowell speaks of
Lincoln as "the first American." The poet's winged words fly far, and
find a resting-place in many minds. This idea has become widespread,
and has recently found fuller expression in Mr. Clarence King's
prefatory note to the great life of Lincoln by Hay and Nicolay.[1] Mr.
King says: "Abraham Lincoln was the first American to reach the lonely
height of immortal fame. Before him, within the narrow compass of our
history, were but two preeminent names,--Columbus the discoverer, and
Washington the founder; the one an Italian seer, the other an English
country gentleman. In a narrow sense, of course, Washington was an
American.... For all that he was English in his nature, habits, moral
standards, and social theories; in short, in all points which,
aside from mere geographical position, make up a man, he was as
thorough-going a British colonial gentleman as one could find anywhere
beneath the Union Jack. The genuine American of Lincoln's type came
later.... George Washington, an English commoner, vanquished George,
an English king."

[Footnote 1: Mr. Matthew Arnold, and more recently Professor Goldwin
Smith, have both spoken of Washington as an Englishman. I do not
mention this to discredit the statements of Mr. Lowell or Mr. King,
but merely to indicate how far this mistaken idea has traveled.]

In order to point his sentence and prove his first postulate, Mr.
King is obliged not only to dispose of Washington, but to introduce
Columbus, who never was imagined in the wildest fantasy to be an
American, and to omit Franklin. The omission of itself is fatal to Mr.
King's case. Franklin has certainly a "preeminent name." He has, too,
"immortal fame," although of course of a widely different character
from that of either Washington or Lincoln, but he was a great man
in the broad sense of a world-wide reputation. Yet no one has ever
ventured to call Benjamin Franklin an Englishman. He was a colonial
American, of course, but he was as intensely an American as any man
who has lived on this continent before or since. A man of the people,
he was American by the character of his genius, by his versatility,
the vivacity of his intellect, and his mental dexterity. In his
abilities, his virtues, and his defects he was an American, and so
plainly one as to be beyond the reach of doubt or question. There were
others