Winthrop Vs Tocqueville Analysis

John Winthrop and Alexis Tocqueville have one important thing in common, the belief that the colonies and America were exceptional. Winthrop is famous for referring to the Massachusetts bay colony as the “City upon a Hill” , aforementioned by Jesus in Mathew 5:14 forever connecting America to being the land of the chosen. Tocqueville as a Frenchman who had seen the French Revolution however wrote of the United States, not as better than other countries or people, but as an oddity in a world of failed revolutions. While the two men came to their beliefs differently and were essentially talking about a disconnected nation of colonies and an actual country, respectively, they both believed that Americans were something different. It was these
Manifest Destiny, was the belief that Anglo-Saxon Americans has a providential right and duty to expand. * Despite the colonists’ belief that men were created equal, they gave little thought to the millions of Natives they displaced with their expansion. The Manifest Destiny term and painting portray westward expansion as a God given right that Americans had; it was because they were deemed fit by God that they justified their removal of Native tribes. Around this same time period President Andrew Jackson ordered the mass removal of Natives from their land, in what would be known as the Trail of Tears, many however never made it to their destination and those who did were put on reservations. Despite their best efforts to remain their own sovereign nation, before Jackson’s removal, the Cherokee, had already ceded countless tribal lands for money they never got “In the end, the whole nation had to make bitter sacrifices of land and kingship loyalties in order to sustain their claim to sovereignty.” The Cherokee Native Americans are a prime example of the negative impact American Exceptionalism had on the non-traditional Americans. Not only was this group used to wage war against another Native American tribe, the Creek, for the benefit of French and British colonists, but they were also removed, and forced to cede, countless tribal lands
These ideas were that some races were inherently inferior and the belief that democratic ideals of equality and freedom only applied to Europeans. Ideas of exceptionalism arose from John Winthrop and Tocqueville’s beliefs. Winthrop because the colonists were rebellious and innovative in their creation of a colony that would tolerate their extremist reviews. Tocqueville, because the colonists managed to create a Democratic nation. It was the combination of enlightenment ideas regarding race and the colonists, and Americans strong convictions of their exceptionality, that led to the subjugation of Native Americans, in this case Cherokee Natives. The Cherokees were forever changed by the arrival of Europeans, and later the establishment of the United States. They lost, and were forced to cede their tribal lands, millions died because of disease and others were murdered, and eventually they came close to extinction because of continuous oppression. The Federal government has repeatedly overlooked issues plaguing Native Americans and has often been the instigator of problems they face, it is because of this long history of subjugation that Native American tribes are scarce, poorly funded and racked with problems of alcoholism, suicide and