"In comparison with other men of their time, the Americans were distinguished by the possession of new political and social ideas, which were destined to be the foundation of the American commonwealth"
About this Quote
Hart is doing something slyly nationalist while wearing the safe robes of scholarship: he turns American distinctiveness into an inevitability. The phrase "in comparison with other men of their time" sounds like neutral method, but it quietly rigs the game. The measuring stick is "new political and social ideas", and once novelty becomes the criterion, the verdict - Americans as "distinguished" - arrives preloaded.
The real work happens in "destined to be the foundation". That single word smuggles providence into history. Hart isn’t just saying certain ideas mattered; he’s suggesting history had a direction and America happened to be its proper endpoint. For a Progressive Era historian writing in the shadow of industrial upheaval, immigration debates, and America’s rising global role, that teleology is comforting. It turns a messy, contested founding into a stable origin story: the republic wasn’t improvised, it was ordained by ideas.
Subtextually, the line also scrubs conflict. "Americans" appears as a unified category, not a coalition of elites, enslaved people, Indigenous nations, women, dissenters, and recent arrivals with radically different stakes in "new" ideas. By framing the era as an intellectual breakthrough, Hart elevates ideology over coercion and over the material realities that made the commonwealth possible.
Still, the sentence works because it mimics the cadence of inevitability: comparison, distinction, destiny, foundation. It’s not just an argument; it’s a blueprint for civic memory, inviting readers to treat American political development less as a series of choices than as the natural flowering of superior modernity.
The real work happens in "destined to be the foundation". That single word smuggles providence into history. Hart isn’t just saying certain ideas mattered; he’s suggesting history had a direction and America happened to be its proper endpoint. For a Progressive Era historian writing in the shadow of industrial upheaval, immigration debates, and America’s rising global role, that teleology is comforting. It turns a messy, contested founding into a stable origin story: the republic wasn’t improvised, it was ordained by ideas.
Subtextually, the line also scrubs conflict. "Americans" appears as a unified category, not a coalition of elites, enslaved people, Indigenous nations, women, dissenters, and recent arrivals with radically different stakes in "new" ideas. By framing the era as an intellectual breakthrough, Hart elevates ideology over coercion and over the material realities that made the commonwealth possible.
Still, the sentence works because it mimics the cadence of inevitability: comparison, distinction, destiny, foundation. It’s not just an argument; it’s a blueprint for civic memory, inviting readers to treat American political development less as a series of choices than as the natural flowering of superior modernity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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