The documents that were made available represent two very different understandings of American Exceptionalism.

In the book American Exceptionalism: How the United States Became the Last Super-Power, Alfred Bester says that “American Exceptionalism is very real” and that it has two parts. First he explains how Seymour Martin Lipset said that because the United States was “created through an explosive revolutionary event,” the only way they could make their nation legitimate was through “strict adherence to the ideological commitments to liberty, equality, and democracy that lay at the nation’s roots.” He then explains how Frederick Jackson Turner said that because the nation possessed “vast tracts of unclaimed land,” everyday people could become