American Exceptionalism

Examples of American Exceptionalism in the following topics:

• The White City, Chicago, and the World Columbian Exposition

  • The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago was an international fair whose grandeur symbolized emerging American exceptionalism.
  • The fair's unprecedented scale and grandeur became a symbol of emergent American exceptionalism in much the way that the Great Exhibition became associated with the Victorian-era United Kingdom.
  • This area, developed by a young music promoter, Sol Bloom, concentrated on the Midway Plaisance and introduced the term "midway" to American English to describe the area of a carnival or fair where sideshows are located.
  • Nearby, "The Cliff Dwellers" featured a rock and timber structure that was painted to recreate Battle Rock Mountain in Colorado, a stylized recreation of an American Indian cliff dwelling with pottery, weapons, and other relics on display.

• American Imperialism

  • "American imperialism" is a term that refers to the economic, military, and cultural influence of the United States internationally.
  • Polk, the concept of an "American Empire" was made a reality throughout the latter half of the 1800s.
  • American imperialism is partly rooted in American exceptionalism, the idea that the United States is different from other countries due to its specific world mission to spread liberty and democracy.
  • Pinpointing the actual beginning of American imperialism is difficult.
  • The American Anti-Imperialist League was an organization established in the United States on June 15, 1898, to battle the American annexation of the Philippines as an insular area.

• The Open Door Policy

  • After winning the Spanish-American War of 1898, and with the newly acquired territory of the Philippine Islands, the United States increased its Asian presence and was expecting to further its commercial and political interest in China.
  • As a response, William Woodville Rockhill formulated the Open Door Policy to safeguard American business opportunities and other interests in China.
  • The Doctrine was issued in 1823 at a time when nearly all Latin American colonies of Spain and Portugal had achieved, or were at the point of gaining, independence from the Portuguese and Spanish Empires.
  • Inherent in the Monroe Doctrine are the themes of American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny, two ideas that refer to the right of the United States to exert its influence over the rest of the world.
  • Under these conditions, the Monroe Doctrine was used to justify American intervention abroad multiple times throughout the nineteenth century, most notably in the Spanish-American War and with the annexation of Hawaii.

• African Americans in Southern Politics

  • A few African Americans were elected or appointed to national office.
  • African Americans voted for white candidates and for blacks.
  • As a result, states with a majority African-American population often elected only one or two African-American representatives in Congress.
  • Exceptions included South Carolina; at the end of Reconstruction, four of its five congressmen were African American.
  • Because he preceded any African American in the House, he was the first African American in the U.S.

• Disease in the New World

  • Soon after, observers noted that immense numbers of indigenous Americans began to die from these diseases.
  • After the epidemics had already killed massive numbers of indigenous Americans, many newer European immigrants assumed that there had always been relatively few indigenous peoples.
  • The diseases brought to the New World proved to be exceptionally deadly to the indigenous populations, and the epidemics had very different effects in different regions of the Americas.
  • While epidemic disease was by far the leading cause of the population decline of the American indigenous peoples after 1492, there were other contributing factors--all of them related to European contact and colonization.

• Manifest Destiny

  • It is rooted in European nations' early colonization of the Americas, the establishment of the United States by white Anglo-Saxons from England, and the continued wars against and forced removal of the American Indians indigenous to the lands.
  • The term described the very popular idea of the special role of the United States in overtaking the continent—the divine right and duty of white Americans to seize and settle the continent's western territory, thus spreading Protestant, democratic values.
  • The term combined a belief in expansionism with other popular ideas of the era, including US exceptionalism and Romantic nationalism.

• Jackson and the Democratic Party

  • After the disappearance of the Federalists after 1815 and the subsequent "Era of Good Feelings" (1816–1824), a group of weakly organized political factions dominated the American political landscape until about 1828–1832, when the modern Democratic Party emerged along with its rival, the Whigs.
  • Democrats strongly favored expansion to new farm lands, as typified by their attacks on and expulsion of eastern American Indians and their invasion of vast amounts of new land in the West after 1846.
  • During his presidency, Polk lowered tariffs, set up a subtreasury system, and began and directed the Mexican-American War, in which the United States acquired much of the modern-day American Southwest.
  • They sought independence from European standards of high culture and wanted to demonstrate the excellence and exceptionalism of America's own literary tradition.
  • They supported the Independent Treasury (the Jacksonian alternative to the Second Bank of the United States) not as a scheme to quash the special privileges of the Whig monied elite, but as a device to spread prosperity to all Americans.

• The Baby Boom

  • Annual births first topped four million in 1954 and did not drop below that figure until 1965, by which time four out of ten Americans were under the age of 20.
  • The country was living the American dream.
  • An estimated 77.3 million Americans were born during this demographic boom in births.
  • The "birth boom" of the post-war period is as much defined by the deaths that preceded and followed it as it is by an exceptionally high fertility rate.

• The "Era of Good Feelings"

  • The "Era of Good Feelings" marked a period in the political history of the United States that reflected a sense of national purpose and a desire for unity among Americans in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812.
  • Monroe's success in mitigating party rancor produced an appearance of political unity, with almost all Americans identifying themselves as Republicans.
  • With the decline in political consensus, Jeffersonian principles were indeed revived on the basis of Southern exceptionalism, and the interlude of the "Era of Good Feelings" came to an end.

• The Election of 1916

  • Despite this Allied sympathy, most American voters wanted to remain neutral and avoid direct involvement in the conflict.
  • The result was exceptionally close and the outcome was in doubt for several days.
  • The electoral vote was one of the closest in American history.