Goodnight, Ethan2022-10-192022-10-192016-04-30http://hdl.handle.net/11210/280In the opening chapters of his monumental work Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed how "the social condition of the Americans is eminently democratic; this [democratic condition] was its character at the foundation of the colonies, and it is still more strongly marked at the present day."1 Tocqueville here is clearly alluding to the settlement of New England by the Pilgrims and Puritans in the 1620s. Tocqueville's narrative of a democratic national heritage established in Protestant faith was one aspect of a greater early Republic campaign to reimagine colonial and revolutionary American history. As a cultural and political project emanating from the revivals of the second Great Awakening, as well as the fears of political division, numbers of lettered men and women were "reinventing" the United States as a Christian nation. Outspoken Christian nationalists like Justice Joseph Story joined Tocqueville in solidifying the Pilgrims and the Puritans as the foundation of religious and political liberty found in antebellum America."en-USEthan GoodnightSpring Arbor UniversityWilliam ApessChristian NationalismPequotThesis