Essay: The Rise of an American Identity

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Sample Essay – American Identity

Words 2,320

This essay discusses The Rise of an American Identity. Throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries the American colonists, who were mostly of Anglo-Saxon extraction, gradually abandoned their ‘English’ identity and adopted a new uniquely American identity.

Throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries, the American colonists, mostly of Anglo-Saxon extraction, gradually abandoned their ‘English’ identity and adopted a new uniquely American identity.

This change in identity was not only the result of historical, environmental, social and geographical factors. It was a self-conscious project in the minds of many of those who abandoned England to live their lives in the New World. This factor, more than any other, contributed to the general population in America, viewing themselves as a people distinct from those who inhabited England.

The Puritans were religious fanatics who considered England a place of depravity and vice. According to their beliefs, the English people were promiscuous and debauched false Christians whose beliefs and customs bordered on paganism (Zakai 228). They felt that to preserve their ‘True Christian’ faith and manner of life, they had to abandon the wicked and sinful society of England (Conforti 27).

American Identity

The Puritans felt that Divine wrath was imminent upon the corrupt and iniquitous land. They had the idea that they could form a new spiritually elevated Christian society in what they imagined were the pristine, unpeopled ‘wild lands’ of the New World (Zakai 140).

The Puritan’ view of America was cast in a religious light, they saw America as a second “promised land” and viewed their move to the New World as a religious migration, similar to the story of the exodus of the ancient Hebrews from Egypt and their settlement in the lands of Canaan as told in the Bible (Zakai 66).

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