The story of American self-making in the antebellum era had been the story of the American dream: work hard, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and free yourself from the bondage of the outmoded (and European) world of custom, convention, and class.
This narrative … involved not just an implicit morality but a whole metaphysical worldview. Human beings were supposed to self-make, fulfilling their fundamental purpose. And, no less important, the fulfillment of that purpose would somehow be rewarded in this life with material success.
By the late nineteenth century, the self-made man would no longer be understood merely as a virtuous, frugal citizen but rather a successful capitalist entrepreneur, someone who had figured out how to harness money and bend it to his will. He was, increasingly, a mogul or an entrepreneur. He might be a captain of industry like Andrew Carnegie (the steel magnate who was born in poverty in rural Scotland) or John D. Rockefeller (the billionaire oilman born to a New York lumberman). Or else he might have made his fortune – as did Rowland H. Macy, Alexander T. Stewart, and John Wanamaker – hawking luxury goods to the newly rich through increasingly popular department and dry-goods stores.
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