More commminstrelon were the scolders and scandalized of Europe’s elite. Shocked at the determination of her fellow travelers to cram more baggage on her coach than it could decently carry, a visiting Frances Trollope protested, “No law, sir, can permit such conduct as this.” She elicited the loud reaction of backwoods laissez-faire: “We makes our own laws, and governs our own selves . . . this is a free country, we have no laws here, and we don’t want no foreign power to tyrannize over us.” Mrs. Trollope thought the association of law with tyranny revealing, even if it came from men who had “evidently been drinking more than an [sic] usual portion of whiskey.” It suggested a bias on behalf of convenience as against custom, lawlessness transformed into freedom. And it typified the ways in which Americans drew distinctions between themselves and Europe.

From such collisions, a uniquely American character began to emerge. Or, rather, an entire cast of American characters—images and archetypes that distinguished, and continue to distinguish, the new world from the old. Try as we may to control our image with public diplomacy campaigns, we still see ourselves as others see us, in portraits drawn from long-ago encounters.