The American Left in the twentieth century was born in America. Contrary to popular belief, it was not the product of foreign powers and alien ideologies. Although each Left generation would have its rendezvous with European Marxism, Marxist ideas were usually embraced to support a radical movement that had already come into being. Most Left intellectuals and activists in America read Jefferson and Whitman before they read Marx or, later, Mao, and many caught the flame of William Jennings Bryan or John Fitzgeraly Kennedy before they felt the fascination of Lenin or Gastro. Sprouting from native soil, the Left often erupted in a fury of radical innocence and wounded idealism so peculiar to American intellectual history.