Book Description:
LIFE AND LIBERTY IN AMERICA OR, SKETCHES OF A TOUR IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA, IN 1857 8. CHARLES MACKAY, PREFACE, IN pursuance of a long cherished desire, the author of the following pages left London in October, 1857, for a tour in the United States and Canada. He traversed the Union from Boston to New Orleans, by St. Louis and the Mississippi, and returned to NOT York by land, through the Slave States. He after wards visited Canada and published, from time to time, in the Illustrated London Newa, a few of the results of his observations, under the title of TRANS ATLANTIC SKETCHES. These sketches, after having received careful revision, have been included in the present work, and form about one third of its bulk. The remaining portions are now published for the IV PREFACE. first time, and include not only the chapters on the great social and political questions, which more than any mere records of travel are of interest to the lovers of human liberty and progress but nearly the whole of the Canadian tour. It is not to be expected that in a residence of less than a twelvemonth in America, the author can have acquired a thorough acquaintance with the institutions of the country, or with the operations of social causes, which the Americans themselves do not always comprehend. He makes no pretence at being oracular, but has contented himself with describing LiFE as he saw it, and LiBEBTY as he studied it, to the extent of his opportunities, both in , the North and in the South He went to America, neither to carp, to sneer, nor to caricature, but with an honest love of liberty, and a sincere desire to judge for himself, and to tell the truth, as to the results of the grsat experiment itr self government, which the Anglo Saxon and AngIo Celtip races are making in America, under the niost favourable circumstances, and with nothing, not springing from themselves, to impede or fetter their progress. j He returned from America PREFACE, v with a greater respect for the people than when he first set foot upon the soil. And if with his European notions that u mans colour makes no difference in his natural rights, he has come to the same con clusion as previous travellers, that Liberty in the New World is not yet exactly what the founders of the Union intended it to be, he trusts that he has expressed his opinions without bitterness, and that while he can admire the political virtues of the Re public, he is not obliged to shut his eyes to its defects or its vices. It is on American soil that the Jhjghest destinies of civilization will be wrought out to their conclusions, and the record of what is there doing, however often the story may be told, will be always interesting and novel. Progress crawls in Europe, but gallops in America. The record of European travel may be fresh ten or twenty years after it is written, but that of America becomes obsolete in fouj or five. It took our England nearly a thousand years, from the days of the Heptarchy to those of William IIL, to become of as much account in the world as the United States have become in the lifetime of old men who still linger vi PBEPACE. amongst us. Those who bear this fact in mind will not concur in the opinion that hooks of Ame rican travel are likely to lose their interest even ainid the turmoil of European wars, and the com plications created by the selfish ambition of rulers, whose pretensions and titles are alike anachronisms in the nineteenth century. London, May 1859. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE L THE VOYAGE OUT . 1 n. NEW YORK . . . . 12 III. BROADWAY BY NIGHT . . . .24 IV. HOTEL LIFE . . . . 37 V. AMERICAN FIREMEN . . . .47 VI. FROM NEW YORK TO BOSTON . 56 VII. To THE FALLS OP NIAGARA . , .69 VIII, NIAGARA . . . . . . 79 IX NEWPORT AND RHODE ISLAND . . .100 X. PHILADELPHIA . . . . . Ill XI. WASHINGTON . . . . ...
|
