Thirty years before Ralph Waldo Emerson argued that "Life is our dictionary," Noah Webster mined the U.S. trade, manufacturing, legal system, religious denominations, Indian heritage, and regional dialects for five thousand new words to add to his A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1806. His best-known works--two dictionaries and a spelling book--signaled that Americans were becoming linguistically and culturally independent of England. In addition to his schoolbooks and dictionaries Webster wrote histories, biographies, essays, political pamphlets, scientific treatises, and editorials. Often patriotic and pious, his influential writing encouraged Americans to improve and expand their literacy. Only after the people accomplished this goal, he believed, could the young country hope for a strong central government.

Born on 16 October 1758 to a middle-class farming family, the descendent of John Webster and William Bradford, Noah Webster grew up in the pious community of Hartford, Connecticut, on the eve of...