When ‘‘The Minister's Black Veil’’ first appeared in the periodical Token in 1836, America was still a young nation striving to craft a unique identity separate from England's. Americans no longer needed to focus solely on survival; they could now pursue and develop various cultural activities.

Ralph Waldo Emerson had long urged Americans to cultivate their distinct identity. In "Self-Reliance," he states, ‘‘Insist on yourself; never imitate.’’ Many Americans were frustrated that so many individuals in the nascent United States continued to look to England for literary greatness, dismissing American literary efforts as inferior. Evert Augustus Duyckinck, editor of a journal that published some of Hawthorne's early works, lamented this literary situation. In an 1841 issue of his journal Arcturus, he wrote, ‘‘In his own peculiar walk of fiction and sentiment, there is perhaps no author who could supply to us the few natural beautiful sketches of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Of the American writers destined to live he is the most original, the one least indebted to foreign models or literary precedents of any kind, and as the reward of his genius he is the least known to the public.’’ Duyckinck emphasized that the American public did not appreciate its authors and called for a change in this regard.

In 1820, Washington Irving became a celebrated figure in both England and America with his publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. This work features a series of diverse tales connected by the framing story of a traveler, and Irving went on to write several more successful collections in this style. Hawthorne aspired to achieve similar recognition with a collection of short stories about his New England experiences, hoping to emulate Irving's success. In 1837, Twice Told Tales was published with Hawthorne's name on the title page, finally earning him the critical acclaim he had long sought.

Irving may have adopted his literary format out of necessity. His elaborate and distancing framework—where he pretends to have discovered a sketch book belonging to Geoffrey Crayon, who then records tales told to him by others—almost serves as an apology for the audacity of an American writer declaring that American experiences were interesting and important.

Hawthorne adopted Irving's literary format because it was the one established tradition in America that had brought its author prominence. Moreover, there is a parallel between these collections of tales and the emerging national identity in America. Just as the individual tales in the collection were loosely connected by a unifying framework, the individual colonial experiences of Americans were loosely connected in the confederation of states that had become a unified nation.

Upon uncovering his own ties to the early Puritan intolerance of Quakers and the persecutions of alleged witches in Salem, Hawthorne redirected the Puritan experience in colonial America through his unique perspective. In an 1850 article titled "Hawthorne and his Mosses, by a Virginian Spending the Summer in Vermont," published in Literary World, Herman Melville—a contemporary and eventual neighbor of Hawthorne—reviewed Mosses from an Old Manse, a collection of tales written by Hawthorne in 1846. Melville, referring to the Calvinist sense of Original Sin in Hawthorne's work, noted that the gloom in Hawthorne's soul was "blackness, ten times black."

The darkness that Hawthorne associates with Calvinism is evident not only in "The Minister's Black Veil" but also in several of his other stories and novels, most notably "Young Goodman Brown" and The Scarlet Letter. It remains uncertain whether Hawthorne aimed to justify the severity of his Puritan ancestors or to condemn Puritan/Calvinist theology entirely. However, it is clear that he intricately wove the threads of Puritanism into the fabric of America, with many modern readers deriving their sole understanding of Puritanism through Hawthorne's works. "The Minister's Black Veil" is set in Milford, Connecticut, but is placed in no specific time period, almost as if it is intentionally suspended between the earliest colonial American days and the nineteenth-century America in which Hawthorne wrote.

1850s: Puritanism continues to have a significant impact on life in New England.

1999: As the influence of the Moral Majority diminishes, many clergy and cultural commentators discuss the role of religion in politics.

1850s: Americans persist in moving westward. The population in the northern states surpasses that of the southern states by one million. Slave-holding states aim to extend their influence into new territories like California and Utah. A compromise in 1850 maintains peace for a decade, but slavery becomes a contentious domestic issue dividing the North and South.

1999: Differences between northern and southern states persist, but not at constitutional levels. Slavery has been abolished for a long time, yet many African Americans still face racism. Foreign policy issues dominate the political agenda as America endeavors to sustain and expand its global influence.

1850s: Rejecting Calvinistic austerity, many middle-class individuals experiment with hydropathy, hypnotism, and phrenology, although these practices are viewed as alternatives to mainstream religious beliefs and medical treatments.

1999: Advocates of alternative medicines such as reflexology and aromatherapy promote them as comprehensive belief systems and replacements for traditional religion.