Founded by a bunch of people who didn't want other people telling them what to do, the people of the United States, soon joined by more people who didn't like other people telling them what to do, had what seemed like unlimited opportunity to actually get away from people who were telling them what to do. Of course many of these early Americans were unaware of the irony of shouting "freedom" at every opportunity while enslaving black Africans, putting various other people into indentured servitude and killing off native people (or at least forcing them off their land) - but, you know, freedom is for white people (male, landowning white people!) While Enlightenment principles undoubtedly influenced European nations which in turn influenced the American colonists, it was in North America where the opportunity to really be free from other people telling you what to do could be realized in practice. What North America had that Europe didn't was a vast, unexplored (by whites) continent where a man could strike out on his own and make his own way, free from little or any government interference.
Settlement by England of North America was spurred by two main reasons: religion and commerce. England had a policy of mercantilism, i.e. the goal of colonies was the enrichment of Britain itself. Various companies and individuals were given rights within the areas that the British government claimed. These rights were utilized to set up profitable enterprises, including cash crop plantations in the southern areas. Religious freedom was the other incentive to colonization. In Europe the religious wars were still raging; even in England the favored state religion could easily change if a monarch professed a different faith than his or her predecessor. Pilgrims and Puritans, the former who advocated separation from the Church of England and the latter whose goal was to reform and "purify" it, both were early settlers unhappy with the status quo of the state church. The early colonies were very much a haven for those who wanted to get out from under the control of "the man", secular or religious. As far as they were from London, eventually local governments began to resemble governments everywhere and started to infringe on individual freedom as some envisioned it; even the religiously founded colonies, ostensibly birthed as cradles of religious tolerance, weren't so tolerant of other religious views, spawning other colonies, allegedly to escape the intolerance of those who preached tolerance.
The war for independence fought by the thirteen colonies was in large part about "stopping other people from telling us what to do". Even after independence from England, there was a great resistance to a central government; it was only the chaos and weakness engendered by the Articles of Confederation setup that spurred the writing of a constitution with a strong central government, but even then there were challenges to its ability to "tell people what to do" up to at least the Civil War. Even then, there was for a long time a safety valve for those who were extreme individualists: the frontier.
"The frontier" was, up to possibly the late 1800's, an alternative for those who just had to live totally free of authority - Daniel Boone settling in Kentucky, the Mormons settling Utah, the English-speaking settlers of Texas, the gold-rush in California and Alaska, the uncounted pioneers throughout the West...until civilization finally caught up with them. The initial borders of the United States were continuously expanded through negotiation and through conquest, new areas opening up one after the other. All of this set a pattern for an American attitude that persists to this day. Based on Enlightenment principles, but with a uniquely American stamp.
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