This paper reconsiders S.M. Lipset's well-known thesis that the origins of
America's dominant value system can be directly traced to the formative eve
nts of the American Revolution. Our specific concern is with one core value
, individualism, and the suggestion that individualist ideas and beliefs we
re widely held in the American population in the Revolutionary era. A centr
al claim of the present paper is that the crux of Lipset's depiction of the
American value system, or "American Creed", is a particular version of ind
ividualism, which we call "liberal individualism". We assess research by le
ading recent historians, all of which casts serious doubt on the assumption
that individualist values were prevalent among Americans in the late 1700s
and early 1800s. We suggest three key weaknesses in Lipset's historical ac
count: the failure to distinguish between different forms of individualism
when characterizing American values; the conflation of elite beliefs and ma
ss beliefs; and the lack of attention to evidence suggesting that Americans
were more communalist than individualist in the Revolutionary era and beyo
nd. The paper concludes with a discussion of possible reasons behind misund
erstandings concerning the origins of American individualism.