A history of the English Language

246.
Noah Webster and an American Language.
The Declaration of Independence and the years during which the colonies were fighting 
to establish their freedom from England produced an important change in American 
psychology. Accustomed for generations to dependence upon the mother country, the 
people who settled in America imported most of their books and many of their ideas from
16 
Mathews, 
The Beginnings of American English,
pp. 42–43. 
The english language in america 345

---

Europe. It was a natural and entirely just recognition of the superior civilization of the 
Old World and the greatness of English literature and learning. But with political 
independence achieved, many of the colonists began to manifest a distaste for anything 
that seemed to perpetuate the former dependence. An ardent, sometimes belligerent 
patriotism sprang up, and among many people it became the order of the day to demand 
an American civilization as distinctive from that of Europe as were the political and 
social ideals that were being established in the new world. 
No one expressed this attitude more vigorously than Noah Webster (1758–1843). Born 
on the outskirts of Hartford, Connecticut, he received at Yale such an education as 
universities in the country then offered and later undertook the practice of law. But 
business in the legal profession was slow, and he was forced for a livelihood to turn to 
teaching. The change determined his entire subsequent career. The available English 
schoolbooks were unsatisfactory, and the war diminished the supply of such as there 
were. Webster accordingly set about compiling three elementary books on English, a 
spelling book, a grammar, and a reader. These he published in 1783, 1784, and 1785 
under the high-sounding title 
A Grammatical Institute of the English Language
. They 
were the first books of their kind to be published in this country. The success of the first