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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
When William Ferguson, an English botanist and entomologist, called at the Detroit home of General Lewis Cass in June 1855, it was natural that during “ a very lengthened and interesting conversation,” the veteran American politician should mention “ the absurd books ” written by British travellers about the United States. “ They come over here,” said Cass, “ run over the country for three months, and think they understand it.” Such sentiments, of course, were commonplace by this time and Ferguson could not have been surprised by the frankness with which they were elucidated. Cass had reached political maturity during a period in which the British traveller became the focus for intense and hostile speculation in the United States. There was no more appropriate target for Jacksonian wrath, for example, than Mrs. Frances Trollope. Her Domestic Manners of the Americans, published in 1832 and widely extracted in American newspapers, helped give broad popular legitimacy to the bitter critical dialogues which pervaded the Anglo-American intellectual community after 1815. During the Jacksonian period, therefore, the British traveller could claim an important role in the development of Atlantic perceptions and attitudes.
1 Ferguson, William, America by River and Rail; or, Notes by the Way on the New World and its People (London, 1856), p. 431Google Scholar.
2 For the British traveller in ante-bellum America, see Mesick, Jane L., The English Traveller in America, 1785–1835 (New York, 1922)Google Scholar; Berger, Max, The British Traveller in America, 1836–1860 (New York, 1943)Google Scholar; Nevins, Allan, ed., American Social History as Recorded by British Travellers (New York, 1923)Google Scholar; Tuckerman, Henry T., America and her Commentators (New York, 1864), pp. 156–251Google Scholar. Trollope, Frances, Domestic Manners of the Americans, ed. Smalley, Donald (New York, 1949)Google Scholar, is an excellent modern edition of that important work. For a sampling of the American reaction to Mrs. Trollope, see Niles' Weekly Register, 29 Sept., 3 Nov. 1832. The wider context of Anglo-American criticism is discussed in Allen, H. C., The Anglo-American Relationship since 1783 (London, 1959), pp. 137–52Google Scholar.
3 Nevins, , American Social History, p. 283Google Scholar. For an earlier, less successful, attempt at periodization, see Adams, Ephraim Douglas, “The Point of View of the British Traveller in America,” Political Science Quarterly, 29 (06 1914), 244–264CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 See Berger, , British Traveller, pp. 20–21Google Scholar, and the more recent summary in Rapson, Richard L., Britons View America: Travel Commentary, 1860–1935 (Seattle and London, 1971), pp. 3–8Google Scholar.
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9 Louis Filmore to John Thadeus Delane, 28 July 1856, John Thadeus Delane Papers, Printing House Square Archives, London. For an embarrassing consequence of misdirected English perception of American society in 1856, see Crawford, Martin, “ The Great Georgia Railway Disaster Hoax Revisited, ” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 58 (Fall 1974), 331–9Google Scholar.
10 Burn, W. L., The Age of Equipoise (London, 1964)Google Scholar, is the most subtle analysis of mid-Victorian stability. For radical responses to the Crimean War, see Anderson, Olive, A Liberal State at War: English Politics and Economics during the Crimean War (London and New York, 1967), pp. 97–162Google Scholar. Crook, David Paul, American Democracy in English Politics 1815–1850 (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar is a work of central importance.
11 Max Berger has remarked, however, that after 1848, a larger number of travel writers came from middle class backgrounds, and were thus, he argues, “ naturally less hostile to democratic innovations than would be true of the upper classes. ” British Traveller, pp. 20–21.
12 Jones, Wilbur Devereux, The American Problem in British Diplomacy, 1841–1861 (London, 1974)Google Scholar, and Bourne, Kenneth, Britain and the Balance of Power in North America 1815–1908 (London, 1967), pp. 170–205Google Scholar, are the best accounts of diplomatic tensions in this period. The best introduction to American expansion into Central America is Van Alstyne, R. W., The Rising American Empire (Oxford, 1960), pp. 147–61Google Scholar.
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14 Lord Clarendon to Lord Napier, 8 may 1857, Clarendon Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
15 Lord Palmerston to Lord Clarendon, 4 July 1857, Clarendon Papers.
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17 William E. Gladstone to Lord Aberdeen, 20 Oct. 1859, Aberdeen Papers, Ad. Mss. 43071, British Library; John Duke, Lord Coleridge, to Ellis Yarnall, 1 Oct. 1859, in Yarnall, Charlton, ed., Forty years of Friendship as Recorded in the Correspondence of John Duke, Lord Coleridge, and Ellis Yarnall during the Years 1856 to 1895 (London, 1911), pp. 44–5Google Scholar.
18 The Times, 23 Jan. 1854.
19 See, in particular, “The Recent Growth of the United States,” Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 75 (06 1854), 699–714.Google Scholar In 1855 a London gallery exhibited a mammoth tree from California, 363 feet high and 93 feet in circumference. Lord Aberdeen was sufficiently impressed by the spectacle to preserve the exhibition catalogue in his papers.
20 Phillippo, James M., The United States and Cuba (London, 1857), p. 390Google Scholar. For a stimulating discussion of pacifist influence upon politics and diplomacy during this period, see Henderson, G. B., “ The Pacifists of the Fifties,” in Crimean War Diplomacy and other Historical Essays (Glasgow, 1947)Google Scholar. Phelps, Christina, The Anglo-American Peace Movement in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York, 1930) is also relevantGoogle Scholar.
21 New York Times, 12 Mar. 1853.
22 Potter, Jim, “ Atlantic Economy, 1815–1860: the U.S.A. and the Industrial Revolution in Britain,” in Prevsnell, L. S., ed., Studies in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1960)Google Scholar. An excellent review of the development of an Atlantic economy may be found in the opening chapter of Thistlethwaite, Frank, The Anglo-American Connection in the Early Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Beloff, Max, “ Is There An Anglo-American Political Tradition,” History, New Series, 36 (02/06 1951), 73–91Google Scholar. In the following discussion, I am, of course, primarily concerned with contemporary perceptions of an Anglo-American political identity. For challenging discussions upon the tradition itself, see Kelley, Robert, The Transatlantic Persuasion: The Liberal-Democratic Mind in the Age of Gladstone (New York, 1969)Google Scholar, and English, Raymond, “ Britain and the United States: The Myth of Differentiation,” The Yale Review, 42 (12 1952), 262–81Google Scholar.
24 MrsBishop, Isabella (née Bird), The Englishwoman in America (London, 1856), p. 448Google Scholar.
25 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, 162, 1505–1507, 16 June 1856.
26 See Lillibridge, G. D., Beacon of Freedom: The Impact of American Democracy upon Great Britain 1830–1870 (New York, 1961; originally published 1955), pp. 80–122Google Scholar.
27 Punch, 21 Aug. 1858.
28 See, for example, The Times, 23 Aug. 1858, and President Buchanan's telegraphic message to Queen Victoria, 16 Aug. 1858, in Field, Henry M., DD, History of the Atlantic Telegraph (New York, 1869), pp. 229–30Google Scholar.
29 Duke of Newcastle to Queen Victoria, 14 Oct. 1860, Newcastle Papers, University of Nottingham Library. For the background and details of the Prince's tour of Canada and the United States, see SirLee, Sidney, King Edward VII: A Biography, Vol. 1: From Birth to Accession (London, 1925), 82–111Google Scholar.
30 Ellis, S. M., ed., A Mid-Victorian Pepys: The Letters and Memoirs of Sir William Hardman, MA, FRGS (London, 1923), p. 7Google Scholar.
31 Edwin Morgan to Lord Renfrew (Prince of Wales), 17 Aug. 1860, Edwin Morgan Papers, New York State Library, Albany.
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33 New York Herald, 12 10 1860Google Scholar. For similar expressions, see Boston Daily Evening Traveller, 16 Oct. 1860; and Millard Fillmore to the Prince of Wales, 5 Sept. 1860 in Severance, Frank H., ed., “ Millard Fillmore Papers,” Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, Vols. 10, 11 (New York, 1907), 11, 307Google Scholar.
34 John Arthur Roebuck to an American Correspondent, 9 Sept. 1859, in Leader, Robert Eadon, ed., Life and Letters of John Arthur Roebuck, PC, QC, MP, with Chapters of Autobiography (London and New York, 1897), p. 282Google Scholar.
35 During the 1850s, however, radical Irish nationalist activity in the United States appears to have suffered considerable decline after the high point of 1848. See Handlin, Oscar, Boston's Immigrants: A Study in Acculturation (rev. ed., Cambridge, Mass., 1959), pp. 152–3Google Scholar.
36 See, for example, The Economist, 5 June 1852. It must be remembered that during the 1850s the balance of trade between the two countries remained heavily in favour of the United States.
37 Horsman, Reginald, “ Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 37 (07/09 1976), 410CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
38 Bishop, , Englishwoman, p. 285Google Scholar. For similar expressions, see Murray, Hon. Amelia M., Letters from the United States, Cuba and Canada, 2 vols. (London, 1856), 2, 217Google Scholar; and MrsHoustoun, , Hesperos: or, Travels in the West, 2 vols. (London, 1850), 2243–4Google Scholar.
39 The Times, 16 Oct. 1852.
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41 Quoted in Newton, Lord, Lord Lyons: A Record of British Diplomacy (London, Edinburgh, New York, 1916), p. 16Google Scholar.
42 Mackay, Charles, Life and Liberty in America, 2 vols. (London, 1859), 2, 114–15Google Scholar. For an extended discussion of American sensitivity, see Mackay, Alexander, The Western World; or Travels in the United States in 1846–47, 3 vols. (London, 1849), 3, 319–21Google Scholar.
43 Stirling, James, Letters from the Slave States (London, 1857), p. 356Google Scholar. See also Bishop, , Englishwoman, pp. 445–446Google Scholar.
44 Ferguson, , America by River and Rail, p. ivGoogle Scholar.
45 Mackay, , Life and Liberty, 1, ivGoogle Scholar.
46 Cunynghame, Lieut.-Colonel Arthur, A Glimpse at the Great Western Republic (London, 1851), pp. 319–20Google Scholar. See also Murray, Letters from the United States, 1, Preface.
47 Buckingham, James Silk, America, Historical, Statistic, and Descriptive, 3 vols. (London, 1842), 1, 9–10Google Scholar.
48 Marryat, Captain Frederick, A Diary in America, ed., Jackman, S. W. (New York, 1962), p. 10Google Scholar.
49 Tremenheere, Hugh Seymour, Notes on Public Subjects made During a Tour in the United States and Canada (London, 1852), p. 155Google Scholar. See also Chambers, William, Things as They Are in America (London, 1854), p. 363Google Scholar.
50 Gladstone, Thomas, The Englishman in Kansas, ed., Rawley, James A. (Lincoln, 1971), pp. lxv–lxviGoogle Scholar.
51 Stirling, , Letters, pp. 137–8Google Scholar.
52 Beste, J. Richard, The Wabash: or Adventures of an English Gentleman's Family in the Interior of America, 2 vols. (London, 1855), 1, 232–3Google Scholar.
53 Temperlcy, Howard, British Antislavery 1833–1870 (London, 1972), p. 247Google Scholar.
54 John F. Crampton to George Buckley-Mathew, 20 Feb. 1852, George Buckley-Mathew Papers, William Brown Library, Liverpool.
55 Lord Clarendon to John F. Crampton, 14 July 1854, Clarendon Papers. For similar arguments, see Quarterly Review, 89 (06 1851), 96–7Google Scholar; Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 73 (01 1853), 20Google Scholar; The Economist, 21 May 1853. For an American warning about English interference in the slavery controversy, see DeBow's Review, 28(01 1853), 20Google Scholar.
56 Charles Francis Adams to Anthony Trollope, 21 May 1862, Charles Francis Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston (microfilm, Rhodes House Library, Oxford).
57 The literature on Anglo-American relations during the Civil War is immense. The two most recent contributions are Jenkins, Brian, Britain and the War for the Union, Vol. 1 (Montreal and London, 1974)Google Scholar, and Crook, D. P., The North, the South, and the Powers 1861–1865 (New York and London, 1974)Google Scholar. For the Alabama Claims settlement, see the valuable monograph by Cook, Adrian, The Alabama Claims: American Politics and Anglo-American Relations, 1865–1872 (Ithaca, 1975)Google Scholar.
