If Americans are famous for our get up and go, that cannot be unconnected with the fact that we all descend from people who got up and came. Whether it was on a leaky, perpetually damp, terribly crowded little cockleshell of a ship like the Mayflower or in steerage in a turn-of-the-twentieth-century passenger ship, our ancestors decided to take control of their lives by taking a tremendous gamble: They gave up all they had ever known and loved in hopes of making a better life in the New World. Even the slaves, who of course had no choice in the matter, survived an ordeal that is quite beyond modern comprehension and passed that strength on to their descendants.
Historian John Steele Gordon