It's more complicated than that, of course, though the point is taken: - the US was equally well founded by irish and scots debtors who couldn't get shipped of

It's more complicated than that, of course, though the point is taken: - the US was equally well founded by irish and scots debtors who couldn't get shipped off to australia because we hadn't found that yet. - ... or west africans in chains. - ... or money-grubbing mercantilist businessmen who had to be legally compelled to farm things that weren't tobacco after the first lot all starved to death by failing to plant food. - or by deists and quakers and catholics (who especially represent what passes for religious tolerance in the colonies, c.f. Maryland in particular) Puritans, of course, also came from the UK (some by way of the mainland when they got kicked out for being too uptight) I think a difference is: Cromwell lost, and the UK kept their Tories rather longer than we kept ours (and many subsequently left for Nova Scotia and the like), so the fallback position that wasn't puritanism in the UK was an explicitly theocratic state religion that had to be a denomination of compromise because everyone knew perfectly well what happened when it wasn't. (this motivation had a different effect in the US: IMO it almost completely explains the establishment clause)