Diary in America, Series One | Page 2

customs, and the means of livelihood so
differing in this extended country.
Indeed the habit in which travellers indulge of repeating facts which
have taken place, of having taken place in America, has, perhaps
unintentionally on their part, very much misled the English reader. It
would hardly be considered fair, if the wilder parts of Ireland, and the
disgraceful acts which are committed there, were represented as
characteristic of England, or the British empire; yet between London
and Connaught there is less difference than between the most civilised
and intellectual portion of America, such as Boston and Philadelphia,
and the wild regions, and wilder inhabitants of the west of the
Mississippi, and Arkansas, where reckless beings compose a scattered
population, residing too far for the law to reach; or where if it could

reach, the power of the government would prove much too weak to
enforce obedience to it. To do justice to all parties, America should be
examined and portrayed piecemeal, every state separately, for every
state is different, running down the scale from refinement to a state of
barbarism almost unprecedented; but each presenting matter for
investigation and research, and curious examples of cause and effect.
Many of those who have preceded me have not been able to devote
sufficient time to their object, and therefore have failed. If you have
passed through a strange country, totally differing in manners, and
customs, and language from your own, you may give your readers
some idea of the contrast, and the impressions made upon you by what
you saw, even if you have travelled in haste or sojourned there but a
few days; but when the similarity in manners, customs, and language is
so great, that you may imagine yourself to be in your own country, it
requires more research, a greater degree of acumen, and a fuller
investigation of cause and effect than can be given in a few months of
rapid motion. Moreover, English travellers have apparently been more
active in examining the interior of houses, than the public path from
which they should have drawn their conclusions; they have searched
with the curiosity of a woman, instead of examining and surveying with
the eye of a philosopher. Following up this wrong track has been the
occasion of much indiscretion and injustice on their parts, and of
justifiably indignant feeling on the part of the Americans. By many of
the writers on America, the little discrepancies, the mere trifles of
custom have been dwelt upon, with a sarcastic, ill-natured severity to
give their works that semblance of pith, in which, in reality, they were
miserably deficient; and they violated the rights of hospitality that they
might increase their interest as authors.
The Americans are often themselves the cause of their being
misrepresented; there is no country perhaps, in which the habit of
deceiving for amusement, or what is termed hoaxing, is so common.
Indeed this and the hyperbole constitute the major part of American
humour. If they have the slightest suspicion that a foreigner is about to
write a book, nothing appears to give them so much pleasure as to try
to mislead him; this has constantly been practised upon me, and for all I

know, they may in some instances have been successful; if they have,
all I can say of the story is that "se non e vero, e si ben trovato," that it
might have happened. [Note 1.]
When I was at Boston, a gentleman of my acquaintance brought me
Miss Martineau's work, and was excessively delighted when he pointed
out to me two pages of fallacies, which he had told her with a grave
face, and which she had duly recorded and printed. This practice, added
to another, that of attempting to conceal (for the Americans are aware
of many of their defects), has been with me productive of good results:
it has led me to much close investigation, and has made me very
cautious in asserting what has not been proved to my own satisfaction
to be worthy of credibility.
Another difficulty and cause of misrepresentation is, that travellers are
not aware of the jealousy existing between the inhabitants of the
different states and cities. The eastern states pronounce the southerners
to be choleric, reckless, regardless of law, and indifferent as to religion;
while the southerners designate the eastern states as a nursery of
overreaching pedlars, selling clocks and wooden nutmegs. This running
into extremes is produced from the clashing of their interests as
producers and manufacturers. Again, Boston turns up her erudite nose
at New York; Philadelphia, in her pride, looks down upon both New
York and Boston; while New York, clinking her dollars, swears the
Bostonians are a parcel of puritanical prigs, and the Philadelphians a
would-be aristocracy. A western man from Kentucky,