Sublime

The Constitution of the United States could, of course, in some ways be read as a document that restricted government in the name of individual freedom—Jefferson had been among those who so read it—and that was the way Coke Stevenson read it. He liked few novels; history was his romance. This man who had taught himself history, who had read in it

What excited Europeans was the belief that they had both the right and the means to ‘make’ or remake America in Europe’s image, or even as an improved version of the old continent.