My Country Used to Look Up to America’s Democracy

When the Greek Revolution began in 1821, Thanassis Petsalis was only 19 years old. He studied law, became one of the best defense lawyers in postrevolutionary Greece, and in his late 60s served as the country’s minister of justice. His description of the political aspirations of the Greeks was written in 1841, 20 years after the revolution began but in a time when the Greek revolutionaries groaned under the absolutist monarchy of the Bavarian King Otto:

At the time of the outbreak of our revolution we were lacking in political ideas, but everyone was inspired by the Americans. When the Greek revolutionaries had to explain what the political principles behind their struggle against the Ottomans were, they always referred to the U.S. as their model. Of course, Greeks at the time had a superficial knowledge of the American Constitution. But all of them could understand the nature of the political society that