All historians agree that a most singular and important feature of the settlers of America was their overpowering sense of mission—a conviction that they were taking part in the unfolding of a manifest destiny of divine design which would shower its blessings on all mankind. As historian John Fiske writes:

They believed that they were doing a wonderful thing. They felt themselves to be instruments in accomplishing a kind of "manifest destiny." Their exodus [from Europe] was that of a chosen people who were at length to lay the everlasting foundations of God's kingdom upon earth.... This steadfast faith in an unseen ruler and guide was to them a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. It was of

great moral value. It gave them clearness of purpose and concentration of strength, and contributed towards making them, like the children of Israel, a people of indestructible vitality and aggressive energy. (Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, pp. 304-5.)

     This sense of manifest destiny has continued from that day to this and will be found expressed in nearly all of the inaugural addresses given by the presidents of the United States.

     However, it is extremely important to distinguish between a sense of mission and the spirit of perverted chauvinism associated with the idea of "racial superiority.” The former is a call to exemplary leadership and service. The latter is the arrogant presumption of a self-appointed role to conquer and rule. The distinction between the two is readily perceived in the writings of the Founders. For example, John Adams wrote:

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth. (Quoted in Conrad Cherry, God's New Israel [Englewood Cliffs Prentice-Hall, 1971], p. 65.)

Thomas Jefferson looked upon the development of freedom under the Constitution as "the world's best hope,” and wrote to John Dickinson in 1801 that what had been accomplished in the United States "will be a standing monument and example for the aim and imitation of the people of other countries." (Bergh, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 10:217.)

It was not uncommon for the Founders to stress the responsibility which had been placed upon them to perform

a mighty task.  As John Adams wrote from England while the Constitution was in preparation:

The people of America have now the best opportunity and the greatest trust in their hands that Providence ever committed to so small a number. (Koch, The American Enlightenment, p. 257.)

     Alexander Hamilton emphasized the same point as the Constitution was presented to the people for their approval.  He wrote:

It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. (Federalist Papers, No. 1, p. 33.)

     He went on to say that if the people of the United States failed in this mission, it would operate to "the general misfortune of mankind." (Ibid.) John Adams later stated that if the people abandoned the freedom gained by the adoption of the Constitution, it would be "treason against the hopes of the world." (Koch, The American Enlightenment, p. 367.)

     After the task of structuring a constitutional government had been completed for the first free people in modern times, one of the Founders, John Jay, thought he saw in it a manifestation of divine approbation which was too obvious to be denied. He wrote:

It has often given me pleasure to observe that

independent America was not composed of detached and distant territories, but that one connected, fertile, wide-spreading country was the portion of our western sons of liberty. Providence has in a particular manner blessed it with a variety of soils and productions and watered it with innumerable streams for the delight and accommodation of its inhabitants. A succession of navigable waters forms a kind of chain round its borders, as if to bind it together; while the most noble rivers in the world, running at convenient distances, present them with highways for the easy communication of friendly aids and the mutual transportation and exchange of their various commodities. 

      John Jay continued:

With equal pleasure I have often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people—a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same priciples(sic) of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general liberty and independence.

     He then concluded as follows:

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties. (Federalist Papers, No. 2, p. 38.)

     Jay's estimate of the unique blessing of the land they had inherited proved correct. The Founders felt that ultimately their boundaries would extend to the western sea, as several of the original colonial charters had provided. When this had been accomplished, the vast Mississippi drainage basin, extending as it does from the Rockies in the west to the Appalachians in the east, turned out to be the most fertile and productive piece of real estate on this planet.

Conclusion

     The Founders knew they were sailing into uncharted waters, and they knew their ship of state was entirely different from anything else on the face of the earth. True, they had examined every kind of political operation known to man, and they had abstracted from history every lesson and precaution they could learn, but their own product was unique, bold, and filled with the promise of a better day. Probably no one summed it up better than James Madison when he wrote:

Is it not the glory of the people of America that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience?

To this manly spirit posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theater in favor of private rights and public happiness.

Had no important step been taken by the leaders of the Revolution for which a precedent could not be

discovered, no government established of which an exact model did not present itself, the people of the United States might at this moment have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils, must at best have been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind.

Then he concluded:

Happily for America, happily we trust FOR THE WHOLE HUMAN RACE, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe. They formed the design of a great Confederacy, which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate. (Federalist Papers, No. 14, pp. 104-5; emphasis added.)