When we speak of Puritanical values, however, some events in America's history seriously clash with its "pure values" or its belief that it's a world liberator. The first one was slavery. No where in the world have we witnessed just harsh case of slavery as in the United States. To this day, African-Americans have been unable to liberate themselves completely from the ugly history of slavery that had seriously marred social relations in the country. Would it be wrong to assume that pure values somehow did not consider slavery a contaminated value? How can puritans justify enslavement of tens of hundreds of blacks from Africa? There is no way America can seriously believe in its puritanical values and still justify its ugly past.

But in its defense, we can say that America was in the end responsible for abolishment of slavery too. If it started slavery, then it brought an end to it too. It was an America too who saw the sheer ugliness of the practice of slavery and decided to fight for its abolishment. Many would still argue that Abraham Lincoln's civil war had nothing to do with slavery directly. It was more a fight of North and South in which slaves found their freedom as a by-virtue of Northern victory. The practice of slavery continues to mock the concept of American Exceptionalism as Morone (2004) argued, "The pro-slavery story makes a mess of traditional theories about American political culture." (p. 181)

It is important to close study the political, social and economic history of the United States to fully understand the concept of Exceptionalism as it relates to this country. While it has had been guilty of many sinful actions, it has tried its best to seek redemption and this is what makes it unique. Instead of other people correcting America's ugly practices, America has always chosen to correct itself and take responsibility...

This spirit of seeking redemption is what makes America unique and exceptional with relation to other countries. American may have lost much of its appeal as a liberator in the eyes of its own public but it still works to protect some of its values that make it unique and hence the concept of Exceptionalism endures. Not only does it try to protect freedom in other countries, it also tries to grants full civil rights to its own people but that is not what gives America its exceptional nature. The fact that America has continued to work on the issues of liberty and freedom so much so that its people have now become very aware of their own rights. They demand and uphold their liberty fiercely: "Citizens have been expected to demand and protect their rights on a personal basis. The exceptional focus on law here as compared to Europe, derived from the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, has stressed rights against the state and other powers. American began and continues as the most anti-statist, legalist and rights-oriented nation." (Lipset, p. 20)
We can now notice how American Exceptionalism has been viewed and interpreted. But in all most interpretations, the concept of "pure values" remains intact because it is due to the influence of those puritanical values that America found its unique place as "redeemer nation," "liberator" and "rights-oriented nation."

References

James a. Morone.(2004) Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (Paperback) Yale University Press

Deborah L. Madsen. (1998) American Exceptionalism. University Press of Mississippi

Seymour Martin Lipset. American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (Paperback)

W.W. Norton & Co. (April 17, 1997)

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vintage Books, 1945