The Puritan line of ultra-Calvinism was so protective of the sovereignty of God (a reaction to the claims to sovereignty of Roman popes of that time) that they considered it encroaching on God's purview to say that they could be sure they were right with him. Only God could determine who is to be given grace and entry into his Kingdom.
Their strong emphasis on the Hebrew Scriptures helped them form the idea that wealth and health were signs of God's favor, so they worked hard to be affluent. It's an illogical procedure but they derived comfort and affirmation nonetheless. They saw the richness of the British colonies as proof of their righteousness and therefore of their superiority. They should have stopped to think that Jesus was most concerned with the poor, dispossessed, unprotected, deprived, needy, and ill: all the people on the margins. His offer of salvation extended to all people, including the rich, but it was for the rich and powerful of the religious establishment of his day that he had the harshest criticisms. the Puritans did not see that part of scripture clearly, however.
The defeat of the British in the war of the American Revolution was taken as proof that God favored us (disclosure: I already had British and Native American ancestors in the land) and that therefore we were clearly better than other countries. This is called jumping to conclusions. It is all very understandable, so we should not judge them, and let's keep in mind that not all Americans shared this way of thinking.
The move westward in the following (19th) century is well known by most of us. After the war with Mexico, we had suddenly doubled in size. If we did not think about the people who were being dispossessed, it seemed clear, as they liked to say, that it was our manifest destiny to expand to the Pacific and become a large and well-endowed nation. The Civil War of the 1860's was of course a crisis which set up some major contradictions in who we are as a country.
We are not alone in expansionist mentality and in contradictory thinking. After declaring independence, Argentina waged a war against Spain which sought to make a grand country out of the lower third of South America, which it pulled off only in part. To do this, the Argentine army bought thousands of African-descended slaves to fight as soldiers. They fought valiantly and died in huge numbers. The remainder was liberated and slavery ended, but then the country pursued a European-Argentine policy and to this day African-Argentines keep a very low profile. Like the US, Argentina waged war against its native peoples at about the same we did, and came close to wiping them out altogether.
Both countries came to see themselves as the world's breadbasket and a land of promise. The difference was religion. Argentina, officially Catholic, saw itself as part of a larger Christendom under the spiritual (but not temporal) leadership of Rome. The US disestablished religion but embraced the idea that the emerging greatness and the rich bounty of the country were signs of God's special favor and became more religious-minded than Argentina. Not everyone agreed with all parts of this thinking, but it developed into a powerful cultural theme.
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