ABSTRACT

The first generation of American independence witnessed an energetic, almost a convulsive, effort to “create” an American culture. There was to be an American language, and Noah Webster set himself resolutely to champion American speech and prove its superiority to British speech. There was to be an American literature . . . an American education . . . an American science . . . and even an American arithmetic, for as Nicholas Pike wrote: “As we are now an independent nation it was deemed proper that we should have an independent arithmetic.”1