ABSTRACT
In 1831, Samuel Taylor Coleridge even observes that the severest naval discipline is always found in the ships of the freest nations, and the most lax discipline in the ships of the most oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of the Americans is the sharpest; then that of the English. Coleridge seems to have conceived of the relationship between the United States and England as fraternal: America is perhaps independent, but its relation to England is clear. Coleridge's relationship with Southey deteriorated after the collapse of the Pantisocratic scheme, and his ill-advised marriage to Sara Fricker was notoriously unhappy. The potential of the United States, however, was a subject of interest for Coleridge until his death in 1834. The most obvious reason is that Coleridge was concerned with the same problems of religious experience that occupied Jonathan Edwards—a central, but largely underestimated, figure in American literature and philosophy.
