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An Englishman’s Travels in America His Observations of Life and Manners in the Free and Slave States
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An Englishman’s Travels in America His Observations of Life and Manners in the Free and Slave States
Nov 5th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
An Englishman’s Travels in America, by John Benwell (1857)
I am delighted with having read this free eBook from Amazon.com and would recommend it to others. Readers who have an interest in America of the mid 19th century will be highly engaged with the author’s adventures. Mr. Benwell goes on a momentous journey: across the Atlantic, up the Hudson, out the Erie Canal, across the Great Lakes, down the Ohio River, down the Mississippi River, sails to Florida, journeys through its torrid swamps and jungles, and overland to Charleston, South Carolina – before embarking for home. Whew – what a ride! Along the way he meets an interesting array of American life. This work is very much a “travel log” of sorts.
As the author is British, and this book was written approx. 150 years ago, the writing style is of an extended sentence construction, with many words that may be more than a bit unfamiliar to the modern reader. (Moby Dick comes to mind.) The combination of “long thoughts” coupled to unknown words (requiring constant “look ups” in a dictionary) can be entirely distracting for a reader. However, I am very pleased to report this is not the case -IF- this book is read via the Kindle. The Kindle’s unique feature of the “integrated dictionary” (which requires that the user simply move the cursor down and to the left of the word in question – to review its complete definition) is more that marvelous, and indeed, tantamount to a savior to keeping one’s pace in reading challenging older texts such as this. Truly, not only will this book entertain, it will no doubt augment your vocabulary. Many of the words mentioned are termed “archaic” by modern standards, but still darn fun (and impressive) to utilize in conversation today. To list just a few, I was somewhat or totally unfamiliar with (and which the Kindle easily supplied a modern definition): temerity, jocose, cozen, surfeit, execrate, perfidious, vociferation, supercilious, haughtiness, and superincumbent.
Researchers of steamboat and canal boat river travel will also be delighted with the content, as Mr. Benwell pays due attention to this, especially in the first two thirds of the text. His adventures ashore in the wilds northern Florida, I found particularly interesting – especially his forays to the shores of olde Deadman’s Bay at the mouth of the Steinhatchee River and the associated U.S. Army activities in the vicinity. Indeed, his entire ordeal in Florida, complete with hostile Indians and many a wild animal and reptile – was a total and engaging surprise.
With all the above said, a major emphasis of the book from about midway forward is to the issue of slavery in the south, beginning with his landing in St. Louis, where he observes a horrific beating of a domestic servant. As the author descends into the depths of the south, New Orleans and beyond, the treatment of slaves and the attitudes of whites towards slavery is major if not primary and a reoccurring spotlight of every following chapter. There is little doubt the work could have been used as a powerful abolitionist tool, and certainly any humane person reading this effort cannot come away without understanding a bit more of what the institution of slavery in the southern states consisted of in the 1850s.
This book stands much in front of and in opposition to the view that “most slaves were well treated and taken care of by their masters”. Indeed, Mr. Benwells’ observations underscore the exact opposite. Of particular interest in this regard is his overall description of Charleston, South Carolina – in regard to the physiological nature of its inhabitants with respect to the institution of slavery. The overall impression of Charleston at this time (1856?), seems akin to the old USSR, or Nazi Germany, were no deviation from the party line is acceptable, and those who are not in complete agreement are carefully kept under surveillance – and eventually dealt with. The classic shining view of regal and fine southern ladies and gentlemen is certainly tarnished by Benwell’s amble prose.
It summary, a very digestable and interesting non-fiction read for anyone who enjoys historical first person perspectives of times now long gone.
Rating: 5 / 5
Nov 5th, 2010 at 11:00 pm
I wanted to test out my Android Kindle application, so this free book was my choice. I was not expecting to be sucked into it like I was! I was expecting to simply use it as a test of the app’s features.
Rating: 5 / 5
Nov 6th, 2010 at 1:43 am
This is the first Kindle book that I have downloaded and started reading this over the 4th of July. I enjoyed reading the book quite a bit (except that I was doing it on a small Android phone so I was turning pages quite frequently). Reading about the early days of the USA, what people and things were like, was actually quite interesting. I am a bit of a history buff anyway.
I agree with a lot of what was written in Micster’s review (nice review Micster and I won’t repeat some of the excellent points you made). I think where the author went astray was the last 25-30% of the book seemed almost entirely about slavery. Certainly it is one of the darkest chapter in the history of the USA, and reading an Englishman’s view of it in the 1850s is interesting, but to go on and on about it ad nauseam took away from what was a very interesting book. The author did not need to keep making his point with multiple examples about how bad it was and how poorly slaves were treated; we got it. It unbalanced the book.
It is a good read though. I may not highly recommend it, but I do recommend it.
Rating: 3 / 5
Nov 6th, 2010 at 2:30 am
It’s interesting to read about what the US was like during this time in history, but the author’s “holier than thou” tone becomes grating rather early on. Read it for the geographical descriptions if you can get past his snooty telling. Otherwise, perhaps you should take a pass.
Rating: 3 / 5
Nov 6th, 2010 at 2:41 am
Probably this would be a good book for people who are interested in historical writings. If fiction is your interest then this is not the book for you
Rating: 1 / 5