What it Means to be American

Choose any three authors. William Bradford, Anne Bradstreet, Benjamin Franklin. show how their writings help define a vision of what it means to be an American. Note that you will want to have some definition of “American” of your own so you can make judgments about the authors. Note also that some of the authors like Bradford or Edwards lived their entire lives as British citizens and that slaves and Native Americans were not thought of as “Americans” – this shouldn’t stop you from using these authors. As we’ll see throughout the term, “American” is very often thought of as a state of mind, not a legal term.