The Original Promise Of America: “The Pursuit of Happiness” Lecture

The Original Promise Of America: “The Pursuit of Happiness” July 18, 2024 Tickets available at www.noahwebster.yapsody.com Join the Noah Webster House for a new, three-part lecture series commemorating America250. Part Two of this series is called “The Pursuit of Happiness.” Many Puritans settled in New England and many Quakers settled in Pennsylvania seeking salvation—eternal happiness in the next world. But these religious folks sought to improve their lives in this world too, as did all other voluntary migrants to British America. Colonists and then Americans avidly pursued the earthly happiness of ensuring they always got enough to eat, of rising in society, above all of owning fertile land in a continent so lavishly stocked with it. Their America was “a place wher [sic] they might have libertie and live comfortably.” This series of lectures will explore how the Revolutionary generation—Noah Webster’s generation—defined the purposes and prospects of their new nation. Noah will make occasional appearances; he played a considerable part in creating a distinctive national culture. But the talks won’t foreground him, nor will they bask in nostalgia for a simpler, more hopeful age. Studies of the past inevitably reflect the present; they can also illuminate paths into the future. While focusing on Revolutionary Americans’ thinking about the promise of the United States in its childhood, we will consider as well how much of their vision has survived, how much ought to be preserved, and why.