The New World and the new American idea had released them from the bonds in which less fortunate Europeans were entangled.

Those bonds were not to be considered as the terms under which excellent individual and social purposes were necessarily to be achieved.

They were bad habits, which the dead past had imposed upon the inhabitants of the Old World, and from which Americans could be emancipated by virtue of their abundant faith in human nature and the boundless natural opportunities of the new continent.
Thus the American national ideal of the Middle Period was essentially geographical.

The popular thinkers of that day were hypnotized by the reiterated suggestion of a new American world.

Their fellow-countrymen had obtained and were apparently making good use of a wholly unprecedented amount of political and economic freedom; and they jumped to the conclusion that the different disciplinary methods which limited both individual and social action in Europe were unnecessary.