PREFACE TO VOLUME IX
Had all the travellers from Great Britain who visited America during the early decades of the nineteenth century been of so discriminating a temperament as the Scotchman whose work we republish as volume ix of our series, Americans might have lacked that sensitiveness that arose from unjust and flippant portrayal and criticism of American manners.
James Flint was of a good family, had been carefully educated, and possessed a sound and just judgment, with capacity for philosophic insight. Coming to the United States to observe conditions, he depicts them with candor and good will. While confessing favorable preconceptions, due to a personal liking for democratic institutions, our author does not omit the shadows in his pictures; but he presents them with such dispassionate fairness that the sting of criticism is removed.
Flint was particularly interested in the Middle West. Therefore, after a brief sojourn in New York and Philadelphia, where he commented judiciously on all that made for the higher life of these two young cities, he followed the great Western thoroughfare which crossed Pennsylvania to Pittsburg, then the gateway of trans-Allegheny America. Here he purchased a skiff and floated down the Ohio, occasionally landing to make visits and observations; from Portsmouth he proceeded on a circuit through Ohio and Kentucky, settling at length at the falls of Ohio, in the Indiana town of Jeffersonville.
A resident at this place for several months, his investigationof Western conditions assumed a new phase. No longer the passing traveller, noting the novelties and peculiarities of the people, Flint began a systematic observation of American institutions in general, and particularly the political, social, and economic life of the Middle West. In his succinct but comprehensive study of the national constitution and local state governments, he anticipates De Tocqueville and Bryce. His comments upon the judicial system show an appreciation of the stern necessities of primitive justice, coupled with the law-abiding spirit characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race. His notes upon the power of public opinion as a restraining force in political life, and upon the universal veneration for the constitution, show that he discovered the fundamental principles underlying American political life. His comprehension of the historical development of the West is remarkable for keen insight and prophetic vision. He realized what the acquisition of Louisiana had meant in dispelling the dangers of a Western secession from the republic; and showed that the true interests of the West allied her with Eastern markets.
Looming large on the horizon, Flint discerned the second factor which was to rend American life. The discussion of the Missouri Compromise had scarce begun, but already he saw that the nation could not always exist half-slave and half-free. He saw also that the long border line forming a kind of moral boundary, was the crucial difficulty, and that the acute stage in the controversy would be reached over the question of fugitive slaves. To the present generation these seem self-evident truths; but few Americans and fewer foreigners had the keenness to perceive this before 1820. Flint, however, unlike many Englishmen of his day, was no radical condemner of slavery;he appreciated its patriarchal features and its real benefits for the negroes. He also saw that the masters suffered more deterioration by the system than the slaves; that the responsibility for the system rested not upon present, but historic conditions; and that wholesale denunciation was not only unjust, but useless.
In addition to his comments on this great social question, Flint throws much light on general conditions in the young West. He studies the spectacular drama of the camp-meeting revival not only from the point of picturesqueness, but of educational and religious development. He realizes the need of the people for education, but appreciates the provisions made therefor in public lands. Throughout the West he finds the saving remnant—people of culture and refinement, who welcome strangers with hospitality, and are laboring to erect a worthy civilization in this newest community. The social equality everywhere evident among whites pleases him, and he remarks not unkindly upon the general dislike for personal service that characterizes the ambitious West. His satire on the excess of the honorary titles of “major,†“colonel,†and “judge,†as well as upon the readiness with which the “land of liberty†is vociferously proclaimed, is gentle and kindly.
But all these features of Flint’s work are secondary to his economic study. Not only did he prove himself a wise and trained observer, but he was a scientific economist, and had come to the United States for research material. At each stage of his travels he sets forth the ratio between prices and wages, explains the industrial aspects, and the prospects for emigrants. Already, he tells us, nearly all the best land of Kentucky and Ohio is taken up. Settlement is flooding Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri,where cheap lands are yet available. He shows the sanitary disadvantages of this newer, more reeking soil, as against the possibilities it offers to the emigrant to secure the profits of his own industry. With keen indignation he condemns the unsound banking system of the West, deprecates the booming of town sites, and the “log-rolling†in state legislatures. But in the face of criticism, and as though eager to forestall unfavorable judgments, he contrasts American conditions with those of Great Britain, with no undue favor for the latter, reminding his English readers that here are no boroughs to monopolize business interests, no clergymen to control education, no nobility to exact special privileges. “I have never heard of any parson who acts as Justice of the Peace, or who intermixes his addresses tothe Great Object of Religious Worship, with the eulogy of the Holy Alliance.... The farming interest has no monopoly against manufacturing: nor has the manufacturing any positive prohibition against the farmer.†Free industry is the dominating factor of American life, the keystone of its prosperity.
In short, we have in Flint’sLettersa remarkable study of American life in the beginning of its new era, at the close of the second war with England. Charitable, comprehending, thoughtful, he does not slur over national faults nor unduly praise local virtues. Dangers, both financial and political, are pointed out; but the basic principles of American society are distinctly and clearly laid bare, and the progress and possibilities of the New West revealed.
In the present reprint, the original edition, published in Edinburgh in 1822, has been followed; save that the Addenda given in the latter (pp. 303-330), have beenomitted, as being composed of material of small present importance:
1. Two letters from a Jeffersonville (Indiana) lawyer dated Dec. 20, 1820, and Aug. 1, 1821, commenting satirically upon the wildcat currency of that day.
2. Three other letters, by various persons, giving an account of material progress in Indiana.
3. “The American Tariff, with alterations and additions.â€
In the preparation of this volume for the press, the Editor has had the assistance of Louise Phelps Kellogg, Ph.D., Edith Kathryn Lyle, Ph.D., and Mr. Archer Butler Hulbert.
R. G. T.
Madison, Wis., October, 1904.