An English traveler named Thomas Hamilton came to America in about 1832 and, like every other English traveler of the era, proceeded to write a book about his experiences. Much of what he saw was delightful. The National Road, however, was not. This was our first national highway, and its route, with many of the original milestones, can still be followed on U. S. Route 40 and Maryland Route 144; but these roads are in much better shape now than the National Road was when our English traveler traversed it in several days of lurching discomfort.
In 1826, J. D. Paxton was a Presbyterian minister in Cumberland, Virginia. In an article that year he wrote that injuries to our rights are “great mother-evils,” and that no such injury could be greater than enslaving a human being. His congregation did not appreciate this article, and by the time it was republished in a book seven years later, Paxton was living far away in Kentucky.
Amos A. Phelps was a young Congregational minister who was about to embark on a career as a noted abolitionist. In 1833, he was still a year away from that adventure, but as the new year came in, he wrote down his resolutions like a million other serious young men.
The English public schools, Edward Lytton Bulwer has demonstrated to his own satisfaction, offer no social advantage to the aristocratic pupil now that the Reform Act has closed the rotten boroughs, and ordinary people have access to good education. But what of the academic advantage? Here, he says, the picture is even bleaker.
In the early 1800s, opposition to slavery in the North was constantly growing, and the fear of abolitionism mixed with the fear of slave revolt, perhaps encouraged by free black citizens, to make Southern slaveholders more than a little worried. Could they reach some agreement with the opponents of slavery? To some it seemed as though an obvious solution offered itself: send the free blacks back to Africa. The American Colonization Society embraced both slaveholders and some abolitionists in an effort whose most obvious result was the founding of Liberia. But not all abolitionists believed that removing free blacks was a practical or righteous answer to the question. C. Stuart, an abolitionist of the less amenable sort, finds the real motivation in the American Colonization Society: it soothes the conscience of the slave-owners with the minimum possible reform.
Victorians delighted in piling significance on the most insignificant things. The “language of flowers” still keeps a tenuous currency among certain young women of the more ethereal sort, but the language of postage stamps has been mostly forgotten. If you have old cards and letters with stamps affixed at odd angles in odd places, now you know why.
On December 13, 1776, all the churches of England were directed to offer prayers for the success of His Majesty George III against his rebellious subjects in America. Here are two of the prayers that were directed to be offered in the Anglican liturgies on that day.