Eighteenth and nineteenth century Americans very commonly assumed that the guiding hand of God was largely responsible for the founding of their new nation, that God had “called forth certain hardy souls from the old and privilege-ridden nations,” and that he “had carried these precious few to a new world and presented them and their descendants with an environment ideally suited to the development of a free society.” Although this Puritan view “had its classic expression during the Revolution and constitutional period, . . .[it] has appeared repeatedly in the course of American history.”