The City on a Hill:
America’s National Identity
Schedule Wayne Holstad for Your Group
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The hope and promise in
the New World contrasted dramatically with that of Europe. Life was bleak in
the Old World. For the individual without privilege, life was solitary,
nasty, brutish and short. Hobbes described life in the state of nature as
consisting of individuals in a constant “state of warre” needing
intervention from a civil authority, to whom was given absolute sovereignty
to keep the peace. The rulers maintained peace at the expense of individual
equality and individual rights. Individual opportunities were limited. Peace
was, however, regularly sacrificed for the maintenance and accumulation of
power and glory of the monarch.
The existing order was challenged, in theory, by
the Reformers and then, in practice, by the English Puritans. England in the
1600s experienced almost 100 years of conflict and civil war on its way to
constitutional government. The end of the Seventeenth Century was marked by
Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, and the English Bill of Rights
submitted in support of the limited monarchy of the Restoration of 1688.
These documents formed the basis of the Declaration of Independence and the
American Bill of Rights. Locke’s Treatises provided the theory and the
English Bill of Rights provided the precedent for religious freedom and
limited government in America. These ideas had never been incorporated into
any nation’s formal documents. But both ideas had been tried and proven
successful in the New World by colonial governments.
A New Beginning
The planting of the cross at Cape Henry, Virginia
on April 29, 1607 marked a new beginning in world history and political
philosophy. Each colony in the New World published a charter declaring its
purposes and its principles. John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” statement is
both a declaration and a symbol. “For we must consider that we shall be a
city upon the hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall
deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him
to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword
through the world.” Winthrop’s declaration is also a promise. In Puritan
theology and English fundamental law, it is an offer to enter into a
covenant with an unchanging God. If the colonists kept their promise and
were faithful, they believed that God would keep His promise and be faithful
in return. The colonists hoped for security and for the blessings of liberty
consistent with God’s promise to Israel under the old covenant.
History affirms the wisdom of the colonists’
covenant. In The Wealth of Nations, written in 1776, based upon a
lecture series given by Adam Smith in Edinburgh, Scotland, Smith made
numerous references to the wealth and prosperity of the colonists in the New
World as he described the changing nature of economics in the Old World. To
Adam Smith, the colonists provided a perfect example of the character and
structure of a prosperous economic system. The economic success of the
colonies was not limited, however, to textbook study. The New World
prosperity contrasted sharply with little economic prosperity enjoyed by
Europeans. Because of the trade and commerce between the colonies and the
Old World, the New World’s success had dramatic and positive effects on the
economies of all nations that did business with the colonies. Many factors
contributed to the colonists’ prosperity, in Smith’s view, such as the
absence of arbitrary and self-absorbed governments and the absence of
ancient land laws that inhibited growth and innovation. Yet, the overall
picture created by Adam Smith’s description is of a shining “city on a
hill,” inhabited by bold, hard-working, but peaceful, inhabitants. The
contrast between Smith’s description of life in the Old World, archaic and
warlike, and life in the New World, industrious and peaceful, is striking.