Of all the diplomatic concepts associated with American exceptionalism and Wilsonianism, self-determination emerged as the most important and long-lasting. It can be said that the United States was born in an absent-minded fit of self-determination during the American Revolution, because British colonists in the New World did not start out demanding independence, let alone democracy. Rather, they claimed “for themselves the rights and liberties of Englishmen.” However, once push came to shove and independence based on self-determination became the driving force behind the American Revolution, the country quietly nourished and groomed this autonomous brand of nationhood for itself and, for most of the nineteenth century, touted it to other emerging nations that found themselves in civil turmoil.

Self-determined, but not necessarily democratic, self-government became the symbolic and mythological hallmark of the origins of the United States and lay at the heart of its perception of itself as exceptional and its drive to become the example for how the rest of world should operate.