In 1584 Richard Hakluyt, a geographer and writer who also somehow has a ton of political influence, presents Queen Elizabeth 1 with twenty-one reasons why England should get in on the action across the pond. She bites.
It’s a bit of a bumpy ride at first, but then the Puritans start getting it together. Plot twist: the English are mostly Protestants, and Catholics aren’t allowed (neither are Quakers, for that matter). By the middle of the 17th century, English protestants are pretty securely established from New England to Virginia.
By 1776, the United States is its own thing with its own ideas… like spreading out (and, also, maintaining slavery, which is legal in all thirteen colonies at this point).
Enter Daniel Boone, the archetypal American frontiersman.