The New England Mind: From Colony to Province. Perry Miller. 1953.

The dominant author in any historiographical discussion of Puritan New England, Perry Miller perpetuates the idea that the English colonists living in North American became American because of their experience with the "wilderness." Smacking of Turnerian bias, Miller notes how the environment influenced American Puritanism and vice versa. He concludes that by the 1730s, the so-called "Errand" into this wilderness had failed. As the proponent of this "Declension" model, Miller argues that occasional sermons of Puritan ministers clearly indicates a fear that the population is losing sight of the religious founding of the colonial enterprise (Sound Familiar?). These sermons call the people to return to their piety of the past where their "City Upon a Hill" was still a conceivable notion to which the communities adhered. Apparently the wilderness experience made this errand impossible--it failed. The upshot was that Puritans were influential in carrying to the colonies their Puritan work ethic and Calvinistic drive towards prosperity.