This observation, made during the 1830s by one of the most astute foreign observers of American life, could not have been more accurate. Since the founding of the Republic in 1789 the business of Americans has always been business, though for most people in those early years that task amounted to little more than scratching a living from the soil. Yet even the earliest settlers, despite all the hardships they had to endure, grasped the potential and sheer bounty of the new world that had become their home. It was in every respect a land of abundance, and one major American historian, David M. Potter, argued persuasively that economic abundance has been the dominant characteristic of American life. Thomas Dale, the governor of Virginia, observed in 1611 what would become a common theme when he said of his colony, “Take foure of the best kindgomes in Christendome and put them all together, they may no way compare with this countrie either for commodities or goodness of soil.”