From the establishment of the earliest American colonies, the European settlement of North America was imbued with an attitude of chosenness. Whether in the form of John Winthrop's call for Massachusetts to function as a city upon the hill or that of the founding fathers' placing their trust in America as humanity's grand experiment, the U.S. culture has always been constructed to reify geographic expansion and economic development as national ideals. Possibly the best example in U.S. history is the movement of European settlers across the North American continent. The hunger for additional land was not always a universal ideal. Through the nation's first fifty years, many Americans remained fearful of the nation growing too large. Even a tremendous land deal such as Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase of 1802 was met with criticism for creating a sprawling nation impossible of being governed. An attitude of American exceptionalism took root during the 1830s. In the 1840s this spirit…