In American Beliefs, John McElroy notes that there were four main colonial powers in America, and each of them found different things and wanted to do different things:
- Spain found bronze-age civilization, and conquered them in a conventional manner as they would have liked to have done in Europe, especially England. Since they found a going concern their only interest was in dominating and exploiting it, rather than creating it. So the only people they sent to their colonies were soldiers and gentlemen to be in charge. No Spanish peons need apply.
- France found in Canada not a going bronze-age civilization but a stone age one. But like Spain, France's primary motivation was control - of navigation of the St. Lawrence River - and trade with the natives. So there was need of traders, but mostly of gentlemen and soldiers to control. Very few peons, even French ones and certainly none other, were needed.
- Portugal found stone age peoples in Brazil. In order to exploit Brazil they sent over workers - in the form of African slaves. Plus of course, gentlemen to control the operation.
- England (it wasn't Great Britain until later) found in the portion of North America which it was able to claim nothing but stone-age people and forests. The land was rich and had tremendous agricultural potential but wasn't farmland until it had been laboriously cleared of trees and vines. The English colonists found that gentlemen were pretty useless; what the situation cried out for was farmers. So England sent over poor people - some, including some of my ancestors, came from Lutheran Germany - and so the American polity was dominated by practical people (even if they often had religious motivations for wanting to come, still they learned that the situation required diligent work).
The conclusion is that Americans respect any honest work. If you reflect on English costume drama, you will realize that we didn't get that attitude from England - where the emphasis was on who you were rather than what you did - but in the American melieu where people who were respected because they were useful, and were respected for the caluses on their hands.
There is also the Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain speech from the film "Gettysburg" (excerpt):
This is a different kind of army. If you look back through history, you will see men fighting for pay, for women, for some other kind of loot. They fight for land, power, because a king leads them or -- or just because they like killing. But we are here for something new. This has not happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free.
America should be free ground -- all of it. Not divided by a line between slave state and free -- all the way, from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here, we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here, you can be something. Here, is the place to build a home.
But it's not the land. There's always more land.
It's the idea that we all have value -- you and me.
In contrast, Americans who wished to establish themselves in Texas when it was still part of Mexico had to declare themselves to be Roman Catholics. So religion and tolerance were also distinguishing characteristics of "American Beliefs", and an element of our distinctive respect for honest labor, sometimes referred to as the "Protestant Work Ethic". This is not to say that Catholics don't work hard and respect it. Let's just say in comparison with those parts of this hemisphere colonized by the Catholic powers, this part was given a very different start courtesy of that "Ethic".