Abstract
After quoting from this section and contrasting Hawthorne's love of history with Emerson's open contempt for the past, McDougall notes that while Hawthorne embraced American democracy and individualism he "could not bring himself to believe Americans were somehow released from the human condition." [...] the front is "show and humbug." If our national history teaches us anything, it ought to show us that so-called exceptionalism can never mean that Americans are exempt from original sin, self-interest, the limits of power and material resources, or, in short, that we alone among the peoples of the world escape from being part of the City of Man.