The american economic hothouse began life with more soil than anyone had ever imagined. Since ancient times land has served as the major source of wealth and productivity. Not by accident did ruling classes everywhere consist of those who owned or controlled the land. From the very beginning the promise of American life, the appeal it held out to newcomers, revolved around land – boundless acres of a commodity so unavailable in their native countries. The lure of land for settlers involved not only sustenance but independence, the prospect of enhanced dignity and self-worth, and the hope of passing a material legacy onto one's children. For the vast majority of Americans in the preindustrial era, farming was both their livelihood and their way of life, whether on a small New England plot wrested from the rocky soil, a sprawling southern plantation, or a prairie spread where the sky seemed never to end.

Land helped shape the American character in many ways. It encouraged attitudes of independence, self-reliance, and individualism that many observers found typical of Americans. It promoted an almost mystical faith in the promise of the future as well as a realm in which a person could escape from his past.