A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [24]
Ill.3 Punch’s view of American manners, 1856.
Other British writers sneered that the self-styled “superior” United States was militarily weak, politically corrupt, and financially unsound.22 America’s markets were prone to panics; its people preached equality but practiced “mobocracy.” English travelers who saw American democracy in action either condemned it outright or praised it halfheartedly as an evolving system. The greatest blow to American pride came from Charles Dickens. Until his visit to the country in 1842, Americans had considered the world’s bestselling novelist to be almost an adopted son. His humble beginnings and liberal politics had fostered their assumption that the United States would be far more congenial to him than class-ridden England. Dickens had indeed wanted to admire America during his triumphant lecture tour. “Still it is of no use,” he wrote dolefully to a friend during the tour. “I am disappointed. This is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic of my imagination.” He warmed to the friendliness and generosity of its people, and he admired the emphasis on education and public philanthropy. But he found American society as a whole utterly intolerant of dissenting views. “Freedom of opinion! Where is it?” he asked rhetorically after being warned not to discuss the slave mutiny on board the Creole outside abolitionist circles, even though the subject was dominating British-American relations.1.6 If American democracy was simply a vehicle for majority rule, then, asserted Dickens, “I infinitely prefer a liberal monarchy.”23 He gave vent to his disenchantment in American Notes, published in 1842, and Martin Chuzzlewit, which followed the year after.
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The great influx of immigrants into the United States after 1846 accelerated the rise of the harsh, strident politics that Dickens so deplored. In 1840 there had been 17 million people living in America; by 1850 there were 23 million, an increase of 35 percent. The altered political landscape—where ethnic identity and class affiliation translated into thousands of votes—demanded a new breed of politician, the kind exemplified by William Henry Seward, who was elected to one of the two New York Senate seats in 1849. While governor he had behaved with shameless opportunism, courting the state’s large Irish vote with his vitriolic diatribes against England. The annexation of Canada was a constant theme in his speeches.24 Though not a bigot himself, Seward was an expert at appealing to popular prejudice to shore up his power base. Once he realized that the Democratic and Whig parties were fragmenting into Northern and Southern, proslavery and antislavery factions, he abandoned the Whigs and became a Republican.1.7 He subtly repositioned himself, raising his antislavery rhetoric and emphasizing his protectionist credentials. This infuriated the free-trade South, but it endeared him to states that feared competition from European goods.
There were two different Sewards, according to his friend Henry Adams: the “political and the personal.” But over time they had become so entwined “that no one could tell which was the mask and which the features.” “I am an enigma, even to myself,” Seward once quipped.25 With his soft, husky voice and confiding manner, he exuded the air of a man who knew the foibles of humanity but did not sit over them in judgment. “You are at your ease with him at once,” recorded an English admirer. “There is a frankness and bonhomie. In our English phrase, Mr. Seward is good company. A good cigar, a