Dangerous nation : America in the World, 1600-1900
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Americans have been increasing their global power and influence steadily for the past four centuries. Even from the time of the Puritans, America was no shining "city upon a hill" but an engine of commercial and territorial expansion that drove Native Americans, French, Spanish, Russian and ultimately even British power from the North American continent. By the early 18th century, Puritan New England had entered "the emerging secular and commercial culture" and Puritanism itself melted ino the new modernizing society. Jonathan Edwards himself, lamented the casting off of the Christian religion scoffing at the gospel of Christ. As Edwards wrote his treatises on faith and salvation and obedience to God, his fellow British colonials were "beginning to think of themselvs as having individual rights that were self-evidently endowments of nature."