Herman Melville in White-Jacket:

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people--the Israel of our time;

we bear the ark of the liberties of the world. . . .God has given to us, for

a future inheritance, the broad domains of the political pagans, that

shall yet come and lie down under the shade of our ark, without bloody

hands being lifted. God has predestinated, mankind expects, great

things from our race; and great things we feel in our souls. . . . Long

enough have we been skeptics with regard to ourselves, and doubted

whether, indeed, the political Messiah had come. But he has come in

us, if we would but give utterance to his promptings. And let us always

remember, that with ourselves--almost for the first time in the history

of earth--national selfishness is unbounded philanthropy; for we cannot

do a good to America but we give alms to the world.