American Exceptionalism

[The Declaration of Independence, 1776] IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Manifest Destiny “This great pressure of a people moving always to new frontiers in search of new lands, new power, the full freedom of a virgin world, has ruled our course and formed our policies like Fate.” Woodrow Wilson, The Atlantic Monthly, 1902 “To understand in the best sense, it is necessary not only to recognize the interests of a nation, but to enter as well into its feelings […]. The sentiment of a people is the most energetic element in national action. Even when material interests are the original exciting cause, it is the sentiment to which they give rise, the moral tone which emotion takes, that constitutes the greatest force. […] For this reason governments are careful to obtain for their contentions an aspect of right which will keep their people at their backs.” Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Interest of America in International Conditions, 1893

Manifest Destiny “Nor is it in physics alone that we shall be found to differ from the other hemisphere. I strongly suspect that our geographical peculiarities may call for a different code of natural law to govern relations with other nations from that which the conditions of Europe have given rise to there.” Thomas Jefferson, 1802 “After the experience of 4 or 5000 years, and numberless forms of government it should happen to be reserved for America to discover the great secret, a system of government that had eluded all form of inquiry and nowhere been suffered to prevail. . .” Daniel Webster, 1802 “Mankind had tried all the forms of civil polity except one and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America.” Ezra Stiles, 1783