Distinguished historian Orville Vernon Burton suggests that, while abolishing slavery was the age's most extraordinary accomplishment, it was the inscribing of personal liberty into the nation's millennial aspirations that was its most profound. America had always perceived providence in its progress, but in the 1840s and 1850s, a pessimism accompanied a marked extremism.

Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607-1876

Nicholas Guyatt offers a completely new understanding of a central question in American history: how did Americans come to think that God favored the United States above other nations? Making sense of previously diffuse debates on manifest destiny, millenarianism, and American mission, Providence and the Invention of the United States explains the origins and development of the idea that God has a special plan for America. The benefits and costs of this idea deserve careful consideration.