Key Takeaways
1. American Exceptionalism: A Puritan Legacy of Divine Destiny
Exceptionalism describes the perception of Massachusetts Bay colonists that as Puritans they were charged with a special spiritual and political destiny: to create in the New World a church and a society that would provide the model for all the nations of Europe as they struggled to reform themselves (a redeemer nation).
Foundational belief. American Exceptionalism originated with the Massachusetts Bay Puritans, who believed God had chosen them to establish a perfect "city upon a hill" in the New World. This vision positioned America as a "redeemer nation," destined to serve as a spiritual and political model for a fallen humanity and the imperfectly reformed churches of Europe. Their mission was imbued with immense importance and urgency, shaping a unique self-consciousness in American culture.
Core vocabulary. This ideology developed a specific lexicon to articulate its tenets, including:
- Visible sainthood / Saving remnant: Individuals who experienced God's grace and were assured of salvation.
- Elect nation / Redeemer nation: The collective experience of sainthood, where God intervened in history for entire communities.
- Federal covenant: The agreement ensuring collective salvation if the community maintained spiritual, political, and moral commitment.
- Typology: The interpretative method viewing Old Testament events as foreshadowing New Testament fulfillment, extended to American history as divinely directed.
Tudor inheritance. The Puritans brought this complex ideological baggage from England, rooted in the Tudor period's apocalyptic nationalism. Figures like John Foxe, with his "Book of Martyrs," fostered the belief that England was God's elect nation, destined to transform into a "new Israel." This powerful inheritance provided the ideological bond between the Old World and the New, laying the groundwork for America's enduring sense of a sacred, exceptional mission.
2. Early Challenges: Dissenters and the "City Upon a Hill" Ideal
The world’s eyes are upon them and if they should betray the covenant then all the world will know and scorn them for their excess of ambition and pride.
Plymouth vs. Bay Colony. While both Puritan settlements, Plymouth (Separatists) and Massachusetts Bay (non-Separating Congregationalists), sought religious freedom, their missions differed significantly. Plymouth settlers, led by William Bradford, viewed their migration as a refuge, not a divinely ordained step in salvation-history. In contrast, John Winthrop's Massachusetts Bay colonists explicitly aimed to build a "city upon a hill," a model church and society, believing God had uniquely chosen their geographical location for this purpose.
Internal dissent. The ambitious "errand into the wilderness" faced early internal challenges from figures like Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams. Hutchinson questioned ministerial authority, advocating for direct divine communication, while Williams argued for complete separation of church and state, religious toleration, and challenged the colonists' right to Indian lands. Both were exiled for their "heretical" views, but their dissent highlighted the inherent tensions within the exceptionalist ideology.
Declension and jeremiad. As the second and third generations of colonists lacked the founders' initial fervor, the rhetoric of exceptionalism grew darker, manifesting in the "jeremiad" sermon. Ministers like Increase and Cotton Mather warned of "declension"—a falling away from high principles—and interpreted afflictions (famine, disease, Indian attacks) as signs of God's wrath and chastisement. Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative, for instance, used "punitive typology" to frame her suffering as a spiritual trial and a communal repetition of biblical bondage, reinforcing the idea that God's chosen people were subject to particular suffering due to their exceptional destiny.
3. Secularization of Destiny: From God's Elect to Model Republic
Franklin powerfully redefined the Puritan mission: recasting the terms of success, where material prosperity assumed a prominence it had not had before, where the conditions of life for Americans were defined less in spiritual terms than earlier, where the collective salvation of the community was transformed into a form of government that would protect the rights of all citizens.
Shifting focus. By the eighteenth century, the concept of America's exceptional destiny began to shift from a purely ecclesiastical mission to a political one. Revolutionary-era thinkers reinterpreted the "errand" as establishing a democratic society based on rational principles, rather than a perfectly reformed church. This transition meant that the substance of exceptionalist rhetoric evolved, moving from religious salvation to the promotion and protection of democratic institutions as a global model.
Franklin's redefinition. Benjamin Franklin epitomized this secular redefinition. In his Autobiography, he used "Providence" to describe a rational principle guiding the world, aligning his own life's success with the utilitarian work of this secular destiny. He presented himself as a model American, embodying virtues like industry, thrift, and common sense, which he believed would guarantee success in the new nation. Franklin's vision transformed the American errand into the creation of a secular state, purified of European corruption and social hierarchies, destined to be a model of democratic government.
National guardian. This secularized exceptionalism culminated in the idea of America as the "guardian of the Rights of Man." Philip Freneau's poetry, for example, envisioned America as a "vast republic, famed through every clime, / Without a king, to see the end of time." This expanded role positioned the United States not only as a domestic model but also as a global force, regulating the conduct of other nations and representing the world's "last and best chance at salvation," albeit in political and commercial terms.
4. Native American Counter-Narratives: Challenging the "Vanishing American" Myth
The mythology of the vanishing American who could not live with the modern democratic civilisation that America was divinely fated to bring to the wilderness of the New World, was invoked to resolve the otherwise irresolvable tension between European claims to the land and the prior claims of the native people.
Policy and dispossession. Native American responses to exceptionalism were primarily reactions to the policies it justified, particularly the "vanishing American" myth. This pervasive belief, rooted in exceptionalist principles, assumed indigenous peoples would inevitably become extinct or assimilate, thereby resolving the moral tension of European land claims. Government policies, from the Articles of Confederation to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, consistently prioritized land acquisition and control, often disregarding tribal sovereignty despite judicial recognition.
Voices of resistance and accommodation. Native writers and leaders articulated diverse responses:
- Samson Occum (Mohegan): Exposed racial discrimination within the church, using jeremiad rhetoric to highlight universal sinfulness while condemning the specific injustices faced by Indians.
- Hendrick Aupaumut (Stockbridge): Advocated for accommodation with the new Republic, blaming Britain for past injustices and emphasizing common humanity.
- Handsome Lake (Seneca): Developed a powerful counter-mythology, portraying the Devil, not God, as sending Europeans with vices (cards, money, whiskey, disease) to destroy virtuous native peoples, advocating complete separatism.
Critique of "civilization." William Apess (Pequot) fiercely critiqued white hypocrisy, contrasting Christian teachings with the settlers' brutal actions. He rejected the typological justification for conquest, arguing that if God desired to punish his elect, he could do so directly, without native intermediaries. Later, the Dawes Act of 1887, intended to "civilize" Indians through individual land ownership, instead led to massive land loss and the destruction of tribal communities, a "greatest hoax" as Luther Standing Bear (Lakota Sioux) called the supposed citizenship of 1924.
5. Chicano Annexation: The Border as a Wound, Resistance as Identity
This land was Mexican once,/was Indian always/and is./And will be again.
Manifest Destiny's reach. The doctrine of Manifest Destiny found its full, violent expression in US-Mexican relations, particularly with the annexation of Texas and the Mexican-American War. This expansionist ideology asserted America's sacred mission to spread Protestant, democratic institutions and capitalism across the continent. However, this process involved violent conquest and the displacement of established Hispanic and indigenous populations, contradicting the narrative of bringing freedom to oppressed peoples.
Racial exclusion. Senator John C. Calhoun's opposition to incorporating Mexican territory highlighted the racial underpinnings of exceptionalism, arguing against the mixing of "colored races" with the "free white race" of the United States. He explicitly rejected the idea that America's mission was to spread liberty to all, asserting that "ours, sir, is the Government of a white race." This perspective underscored the selective nature of American idealism, where racial purity often superseded the dictates of continental expansion.
Chicano resistance and identity. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), which ceded vast Mexican territories to the US, promised citizenship and property rights that were often violated, leading to a profound cultural trauma. Chicano writers and activists articulated powerful counter-narratives:
- Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo: Described the dispossession and loss of rights for Californios, noting the new language and laws were "antagonistic to our interests and rights."
- Corridos: Folk ballads like "Gregorio Cortez" immortalized Mexican outlaws as heroes resisting Anglo injustice and lawlessness.
- Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton's Who Would Have Thought It?: Allegorized American annexation as Yankee greed and hypocrisy, exposing the sham of the "sacred mission."
- "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan" (1969): A manifesto reclaiming Aztlan (the annexed territories) as the Chicano homeland, asserting nationalism, self-determination, and cultural pride against the "brutal 'gringo' invasion."
- Gloria Anzaldua: Described the US-Mexican border as a "1,950 mile-long wound," highlighting the experience of the mestiza (mixed-blood) in a culturally divided "borderland."
6. The Western Genre: Mythologizing Conquest and the Frontier Hero
While couched in terms of the coming of civilisation, the rise of law and order or the establishment of community values, the Western is essentially about conquest.
Turner's frontier thesis. Frederick Jackson Turner's "Significance of the Frontier in American History" (1894) defined the West not merely as a place but as a process that shaped a unique American character. This process of "perennial rebirth" and return to "primitive simplicity" provided a historical justification for Manifest Destiny, framing the conquest of the wilderness as essential to American development and identity. The Western genre, emerging in the 20th century, became the primary cultural vehicle for this mythologized past.
The archetypal hero. The Western hero, exemplified by Owen Wister's The Virginian and Zane Grey's characters, embodies idealized American values:
- Noble by nature: Independent, honorable, courageous, a "noble savage" descendant of the Anglo-Saxon knight.
- Master of the land: Possesses unique knowledge and a mystical affinity with the landscape, able to "read" its signs.
- Civilizing force: Tames the wilderness and defeats villains, but often cannot remain in the civilized society he creates.
- Dominion: Exercises control over nature and himself, often through a harsh, pragmatic "common sense" that appears cruel to Easterners.
John Ford's vision. Director John Ford's Westerns, particularly his cavalry trilogy (Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande), solidified a complex mythology of American exceptionalism. His films sanctioned the dispossession of native peoples and the destruction of existing cultures in the Southwest, portraying it as a lamentable but inevitable outcome of America's national destiny. The US Cavalry, in Ford's narrative, became the heroic agent of Manifest Destiny, realizing the nation's exceptional purpose through sacrifice and force.
7. Nineteenth-Century Literary Critiques: Doubting America's Moral Progress
I know not but man may so deform his works in the settlements, as to leave that which is so clear in the wilderness, a matter of doubt among traders and priests.
American Renaissance skepticism. While figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman celebrated America's unique potential and democratic destiny, other prominent 19th-century writers expressed profound skepticism. F.O. Matthiessen's "American Renaissance" identified a common thread among these authors: a shared objection to the pervasive materialism and commercialism that threatened America's spiritual and moral destiny.
Cooper's pessimism. James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales dramatically portrayed the conflict between wilderness and encroaching civilization. Through Natty Bumppo, Cooper critiqued the "wasty ways" of settlers who exploited natural resources, suggesting a pessimistic vision of America's ability to realize its democratic promise. The vanishing wilderness symbolized the erosion of the very values that distinguished America from the "corrupt societies of the Old World."
Hawthorne and Melville's dark vision. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville offered even sharper critiques. Hawthorne, in "The Custom-House" and The Scarlet Letter, depicted a federal government hostile to its citizens and a Puritan legacy preoccupied with judgment and punishment, casting doubt on America's capacity for true reformation. Melville, in Moby Dick and Pierre, challenged Emerson's optimistic view of individual self-reliance, dramatizing how isolated consciousness could lead to egotism and destruction, and portraying nature as indifferent or hostile, rather than benevolently revealing divine truth.
8. Abolitionist Voices: Exposing Hypocrisy in the "Redeemer Nation"
The freedom I had before the money was paid was dearer to me. God gave me that freedom; but man put God’s image in the scales with the paltry sum of three hundred dollars.
Contradiction of ideals. The institution of slavery brutally contradicted America's self-proclaimed idealism and divine destiny as a "redeemer nation." Abolitionist writers, particularly former slaves, powerfully exploited this rhetorical gap, using the very language of exceptionalism to condemn the "peculiar institution" and expose the moral corruption at the heart of American society. Their narratives served as damning indictments of a nation that claimed spiritual purity while perpetuating systemic brutality.
Jacobs's moral wilderness. Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl used exceptionalist rhetoric to highlight her exclusion from America's national myth. She likened her enslavement to the Babylonian captivity, exposing the "howling moral wilderness" within American civilization. Jacobs distinguished between the hypocritical "God of the slave-holders" and a true God who aided her escape, demonstrating how divine Providence worked to subvert, rather than further, America's proclaimed national destiny. Her bitterness stemmed from the fact that her freedom was bought, reducing "God's image" to a monetary value.
Douglass's critique of Christianity. Frederick Douglass, in his Narrative, similarly contrasted American slavery with American Christianity, revealing the latter as a "mere covering for the most appalling barbarity." He argued that religious slaveholders were the "meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly" of masters, using scripture to justify their brutality. Douglass's autobiography became a means of self-affirmation, demonstrating how the power of self-transformation, central to exceptionalism, was more relevant to the enslaved seeking freedom than to the citizens perpetuating oppression.
9. Post-Modern Deconstruction: The West as a Contradictory Myth
The West was ‘tamed’ by men who were drawn to the West in the first place because it was untamed, wild, beyond the strictures of civilised life. By taming the wilderness they brought civilisation and the destruction of what they had themselves valued.
Nostalgia and irony. Larry McMurtry's contemporary Western novels, such as Lonesome Dove and Buffalo Girls, deconstruct the mythology of the West by highlighting its inherent contradictions. He focuses on the poignant irony that the very qualities that attracted men to the wild West—its untamed nature, freedom from civilization—were destroyed by their efforts to "tame" it. This leads to a self-consciously nostalgic approach, mourning the loss of a heroic vision that was, in reality, often divorced from the harsh realities of frontier life.
Myth vs. reality. McMurtry's characters often seek refuge in the mythologized West, only to find it has vanished or never truly existed. In Buffalo Girls, figures like Calamity Jane and Sitting Bull join Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, finding meaning in the spectacle of a past that no longer exists. In Lonesome Dove, Augustus McCrae observes that the "taming" of the wilderness by Texas Rangers like himself and Woodrow Call has ironically led to the proliferation of towns and the shrinking of the frontier, leaving them without a place.
Disillusionment and sacrifice. McMurtry's work portrays the West as a "closed and shrinking world," where historical figures are "painfully ordinary" and heroism is found in unexpected, often flawed, places. The pursuit of the Western myth leads to wasted lives and disappointed hopes, as characters like Lonnie in Horseman Pass By find only the "pathetic spectacle" of those pursuing an elusive ideal. This elegiac tone underscores the sacrifice of genuine ideals to the relentless march of "progress" and "civilization," questioning the benevolent narrative of America's exceptional destiny.
10. Toni Morrison's Re-appropriation: Race as the Unspoken Core of American History
Living in a racially articulated and predicated world, I could not be alone in reacting to this aspect of the American cultural and historical condition.
Unveiling the racial encounter. Toni Morrison's work fundamentally challenges the traditional narrative of American history by re-inscribing race as its unspoken, yet foundational, element. In Playing in the Dark, she argues that American literature, whether revered or loathed, is profoundly shaped by its "encounter with racial ideology." Morrison's project is to expose the history obscured by an exclusive focus on exceptionalist mythology, which invariably defines "God's chosen people" as white and excludes African Americans and other marginalized groups.
Re-appropriating the past. Morrison's novels, like Beloved and Jazz, form a grand historical narrative that re-appropriates African-American history. Beloved, set in the aftermath of slavery, explores the immense difficulty of transitioning from enslaved to free, where characters like Sethe must grapple with personal sovereignty and the moral implications of their actions in a world shaped by "the Misery" of white supremacy. Morrison insists that this history "was not a story to pass on" but must be remembered, as forgetting it leads to a partial narrative that perpetuates exceptionalism's exclusions.
Challenging exceptionalism's exclusions. Morrison's characters, like Joe and Violet in Jazz, navigate a post-slavery America where the emancipation of black bodies demands a corresponding emancipation of black minds. Their journeys trace the struggle to find a place and a home in a nation whose official mythology has historically denied their full humanity. By centering black experience, Morrison's work directly confronts the assumptions and exclusions of American exceptionalism, revealing how the concept of a "perfected" America was often predicated on the subjugation and erasure of non-white populations.
11. Pynchon's Critique: Exceptionalism as a Conduit for Imperialism and Dispossession
Does Brittania, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream? — in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow’d Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever tis not yet mapp’d, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen, — serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yee be true, — Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ’s Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe till the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, measur’d and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments, — winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.
Uncovering the dispossessed. Thomas Pynchon deconstructs American exceptionalism by exposing its role in perpetuating internal class divisions and fueling imperialistic ambitions. In The Crying of Lot 49, Oedipa Maas discovers a secret organization, the Tristero, representing the dispossessed and disinherited, hidden beneath the official rhetoric of the Republic. This revelation forces her to confront the binary choices—elect or preterite, citizen or exile—imposed by a nation that, despite its "infinite possibility," reduces all to a rigid, exclusionary framework.
The "Winthrop machine." Pynchon extends this critique in Gravity's Rainbow, where American exceptionalism operates on a global stage during World War II. He traces the origins of American cultural imperialism to the "Winthrop machine," the Puritan ideology of mission that defined the "elect" by opposition to the "preterite." William Slothrop, an early American ancestor, represents the "fork in the road America never took," an alternative path of acceptance and being "at home with the Earth," rather than the "grim rationalization of the World" that drives imperial expansion.
Mapping evil. In Mason & Dixon, Pynchon's eponymous heroes, tasked with surveying a line across the American wilderness, unwittingly become agents of this colonial ideology. Their scientific mission, intended to map the new nation's identity, instead serves the interests of "commerce, decadence, savagery and, ultimately, death." The "Visto" they draw imposes a deadly European metaphysic on the land, transforming "subjunctive Hopes" into "declarative" certainties that serve "the ends of Governments," thereby stripping the sacred from the land and leading to "Despair."
12. Vietnam's Legacy: Exceptionalism's Enduring Power to Justify Conflict
The Puritan belief that Satan dwelt in Nature could have been born here.
Regeneration through violence. James William Gibson argues that the fundamental American myth of "regeneration through violence," honed during the Indian wars to justify land grabs and assert moral superiority, extended to the Vietnam War. This mythology, which posits that "might made right" and each victory recharged the culture, adapted to incorporate new enemies as US interests expanded overseas. Hollywood films, initially avoiding direct confrontation with Vietnam, later produced Westerns and war movies that subtly reinforced this narrative.
Revisionist history. The defeat in Vietnam challenged America's self-image, leading to a "revisionist history" that sought to reconcile the outcome with exceptionalist ideals. President Reagan's designation of the war as a "noble cause" exemplified this effort. Films like the Rambo series portrayed the veteran as an avenging warrior, explaining military defeat not as a flaw in American ideology, but as a consequence of "self-imposed restraint" or a "corrupt or cowardly political structure" that prevented victory. Rambo, as a messianic figure, symbolically erased and rewrote the history of American involvement.
The chaos of history. Michael Herr's Dispatches offered a stark counter-narrative, exposing the moral outrage and chaos of the war. Herr's portrayal of the Vietnamese jungle as a place where "Satan dwelt in Nature" translated the conflict into terms of American cultural mythology, suggesting a landscape requiring redemption by "God's chosen people." Ultimately, the Vietnam War exposed the limits of American power and the moral ambiguity of its advanced technology, forcing a confrontation with the very ideology of exceptionalism that had historically offered a "mythological refuge from the chaos of history and the uncertainty of life."
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