American Scenes, and Christian Slavery

American Scenes, and Christian
Slavery

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Slavery
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Title: American Scenes, and Christian Slavery A Recent Tour of Four
Thousand Miles in the United States
Author: Ebenezer Davies
Release Date: February 1, 2004 [EBook #10898]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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CHRISTIAN SLAVERY ***

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AMERICAN SCENES,
AND
CHRISTIAN SLAVERY:
A RECENT TOUR OF FOUR THOUSAND MILES IN THE UNITED
STATES.

BY EBENEZER DAVIES,
LATE MINISTER OF MISSION CHAPEL, NEW AMSTERDAM,
BERBICE.
MDCCCXLIX.

PREFACE.
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