United States and its Civil Wars

There is a distinctive way in which the history of the US has often been written (and read). This is one reason for the continuing vitality of the notion of “American exceptionalism”, which has taken many forms, not all of them so pithily expressed as the ambition to “make America great again” that has recently consumed so much attention. When President Barack Obama was challenged as to whether he believed in American exceptionalism, he sought to acknowledge that there was a kind of exceptionalism in his own country, just as there was a kind of British exceptionalism or Greek exceptionalism. This, however, was a soft answer that failed to satisfy hardline believers, who claim unique possession of an exemplary story: told of the American people, by the American people, for the American people.