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Throughout his life, Walt Whitman was dazzled by the 19th century's seemingly endless cascade of political, economic, technological, and social revolutions. He spent his career in search of the Great American Artist who could capture the incredible nature of the country and the age. In Democratic Vistas, Whitman offered his own vision of the world's evolving liberal Manifest Destiny, complete with castles in the air, exploration of the stars, and the conquest of death. Whitman believed there were no discernable limits to human achievement, if only we would leave each other in peace.

John Ponet (ca. 1514-1556) was the Anglican Bishop of Winchester at a raucous and revolutionary time in English history. King Henry VIII had recently inaugurated the English Reformation and established the Anglican Church, staffed in part at least with emerging radicals like Ponet. When the Catholic Queen Mary I determined to roll back Protestantism, Ponet and hundreds of others fled to Europe. During his exile, Ponet wrote a Short Treatise on Political Power (1556), which argued that the people can and should punish-perhaps even execute-wicked monarchs. Ponet's tract anticipated great liberal thinkers for centuries to come. By 1776, the Short Treatise rested (well-worn) on many Patriots' bookshelves.