During his recent sojourn in the United States, the Author did not
conceive the intention of writing a book on the subject. All he
contemplated was the publication of a few letters in a London Journal
on which he had been accustomed to rely for intelligence from Europe
when residing in Berbice. So much he was disposed to attempt for
several reasons.
Having entered the States by their most Southern port--that of New
Orleans, and finding himself at once in the midst of Slavery, he had
opportunities of observing that system not often enjoyed by a British
"Abolitionist." As the Pastor, also, of a large congregation, of whom a
great number were but a few years ago held in cruel bondage, he would
naturally look upon the treatment of the same race in America with
keener eyes and feelings more acute than if he had not stood in that
relation.
Identified, too, with those persons who represent the principles of the
old Puritans and Nonconformists in England, he would survey the growth
and spread of those principles in their new soil and climate with a
more than common interest. New England, especially, on whose sods the
foot-prints of the Pilgrims had been impressed, and on whose rocks
their early altars had been reared, would be to him hallowed ground.
Travelling, leisurely, as he did, at his own expense, northward from
New Orleans to Boston, and westward as far as Utica,--making a tour of
more than four thousand miles, sometimes known and sometimes unknown,
just as inclination prompted,--representing no public body, bound to no
party, a "Deputation sent by himself,"--he was completely free and
independent in thought and action, and enjoyed advantages for
observation which do not often meet.
It was natural that he should wish to tell his friends in Great
Britain, and in the West Indies, what he had seen and heard. To
denounce what is evil and to commend what is good is at all times
gratifying; in doing which, he sought to describe the men and the
manners of America just as they appeared to him.
Several letters, containing the narrative of a few days spent in New
Orleans, appeared in the _Patriot_. Their favourable reception by the
readers of that journal led to the preparation of the present volume,
in which the letters referred to, having undergone a careful revision,
re-appear, followed by nearly thirty others descriptive of the Author's
tour.
Our Transatlantic friends are morbidly sensitive as to the strictures
of strangers. They hate the whole tribe of Travellers and Tourists,
Roamers and Ramblers, Peepers and Proclaimers, and affect to ridicule
the idea of men who merely pass through the country, presuming to give
opinions on things which it is alleged so cursory a view cannot qualify
them fully to understand. Our cousins have, doubtless, had occasional
provocations from the detested race in question; but their feeling on
this point amounts to a national weakness. It is always worth knowing
how we appear to the eyes of others, and what impression the first
sight of us is apt to produce; and this knowledge none can communicate
but the stranger, the tourist, the passer-by. What faults and failings
soever we may have in England, and their "name is legion," by all means
let them be unsparingly exposed by every foreign tourist that treads
upon our soil. Let us be satirized, ridiculed, laughed at, caricatured,
anything, so that we may be shamed out of all that is absurd and
vicious in our habits and customs. In the present instance our Western
kinsmen are described by one, if they will believe his own testimony,
of the most candid and truthful of travellers,--one who has viewed them
and all their institutions, except _one_, with the most friendly eye,
and who deeply regrets that so much of what is lovely and of good
report should be marred and blotted by so much of what is disgraceful
to a great and enlightened people.
As to the performance in a literary point of view, the Author will say
nothing. The public will form their own judgment. If they like it, they
will read; if not, the most seductive preface would not tempt them.