Jackson Packet: Strangers in a Strange Land
Ever been to a place where hogs “drink from fountains flowing with wine”, where you can “recite poems with charming Indian maidens”, where your neighbors make “wreathes of luxuriant wildflowers” for you. Sounds all right: except that it is full of “untutored savages who solve routine arguments by gouging each other’s eyes and biting each other’s noses”. This exotic land of contradiction was the American West and these descriptions are taken straight from the writings of 19th century visitors from Europe in the 1820s and 1830s. The U.S. was still a “New World” to Europeans. Rumor has it that Americans spoke differently, ate differently, and most intriguing-lived on the wild western frontier.
Europeans who could afford the trip came to see this curious country for themselves. Later, many published letters, diaries, and books with a wide variety of impressions. To some, the American West was a land of brave adventurers, to others it was a land of rude barbarians.
Frances Trollope and Alexis de Tocqueville-whose writings are excerpted on these pages-are just two of these European visitors. They traveled the same land, but offered very different pictures of the frontier.
Trollope was a well to do British lady with an adventurous spirit. When she came to the U.S. in the late 1820s she went straight to Cincinnati, Ohio-which was still in the heart of frontier country. There she felt snubbed by society people and dishonored by common folk. And when she returned to Europe, She vented her anger. The resulting book Domestic Manners of the American People (1832), was widely read in the U.S. and just as widely despised.
Alexis de Tocqueville, though an aristocrat like Mrs. Trollope, arrived in America with a different perspective. He came from France, where the revolutionary idea of democracy hung in the air at cafes and salons. Trained as an expert in politics, he wanted to study Americans to see what the French could learn. His Democracy in America turned out to be so accurate an analysis that it is still read in universities all over the U.S.- 150 years after it was first published.
As you read the documents, look for the ways Trollope and Tocqueville describe the West. Then answer the questions that follow.
Questions:
T or F
_____ 1. Tocqueville thought that restlessness and greed would eventually cause the downfall of the U.S.
_____2. In Tocqueville’s view, most frontier settlers were illiterate.
_____3. According to Tocqueville, family background and wealth got little attention on the frontier.
_____4. Trollope found America to be a marvelous vacation spot.
_____5. Trollope enjoyed her closeness to common people.
_____6. Trollope and Tocqueville thought the West offered opportunities to the poor as well as the rich.
Think about it
- What did Trollope and Tocqueville find most shocking about the West?
- By the 19th century, Europe did not have a frontier. Do you think this may have contributed to Europeans curiosity about America?
--Tod Olson
Frances Trollope
There is no charm, no grace in (Americans’) conversations. I very seldom during my whole stay in the country heard a sentence elegantly turned, and correctly pronounced from the lips of an American…
With their hours (at work), I have nothing to (say): I doubt not they are all spent wisely; but what are their hours of recreation? It is rarely they dine in society, except in taverns and boardinghouses. Then they eat with great rapidity, and in total silence…
(I noticed) the total want of all the usual courtesies of the table, the voracious rapidity with which the (food was) seized and devoured, the strange, uncouth phrases and pronunciation: the loathsome spitting, from the contamination of which it was absolutely impossible to protect our dresses: the frightful manner of feeding with their knives, till the whole blade seemed to enter the mouth; and the still more frightful manner of cleaning the teeth afterwards with ta pocket knife.
The extraordinary familiarity o four poor neighbors startled us at first, and we hardly knew how to receive their uncouth advances… Any man’s son may become the equal of any other man’s son, and the consciousness of this certainly a spur to exertion; on the other hand, it is also a spur to … coarse familiarity, (without)any shadow of respect. This is a positive evil, and, I think, more than balances its advantages.
Notwithstanding all this, the country is a very fine country well worth visiting for a thousand reasons founded on admiration and respect; the thousandth I, that we shall feel the more contented with our own.
--from Domestic Manners of the Americans
Alexis De Tocqueville
In America, millions of men are marching at once towards the same horizon; their language, their religion, their manners differ, their object is the same. Fortune has been promised to them somewhere in the West, and to the West they go to find it.
In Europe we (have a tendency) to look upon a restless disposition, an unbounded desire for riches, and an excessive love of independence as… very dangerous to society. Yet these are the very elements that ensure a long and peaceful future to the republics of America. (Otherwise), the population would collect in certain spots and would soon experience (needs) like those of the Old World…(Therefore), what we should call (greed), the Americans frequently term (praiseworthy)…
Everything about (the frontiersman) is primitive and wild, but he himself is the result of the labor and experience of 18 centuries. He wears the dress and speaks the language of cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious about the future, and ready for argument about the present: he is highly civilized being, who consents for a time to inhabit the backwoods, and who penetrates into the wilds with the Bible, and axe, and some newspapers…
In the Western settlements we may behold democracy arrived at its utmost limits. In these states, founded offhand and as it were by chance…, the nearest neighbors are ignorant of each other’s history. In this part of the American continent, therefore, the population has escaped the influence not only of great names and great wealth, but even o f the natural aristocracy of knowledge and virtue.
--from Democracy in America