It has been the ambition of my literary life to write a book about
the United States, and I had made up my mind to visit the country
with this object before the intestine troubles of the United States
government had commenced. I have not allowed the division among
the States and the breaking out of civil war to interfere with my
intention; but I should not purposely have chosen this period
either for my book or for my visit. I say so much, in order that
it may not be supposed that it is my special purpose to write an
account of the struggle as far as it has yet been carried. My wish
is to describe, as well as I can, the present social and political
state of the country. This I should have attempted, with more
personal satisfaction in the work, had there been no disruption
between the North and South; but I have not allowed that disruption
to deter me from an object which, if it were delayed, might
probably never be carried out. I am therefore forced to take the
subject in its present condition, and being so forced I must write
of the war, of the causes which have led to it, and of its probable
termination. But I wish it to be understood that it was not my
selected task to do so, and is not now my primary object.
Thirty years ago my mother wrote a book about the Americans, to
which I believe I may allude as a well-known and successful work
without being guilty of any undue family conceit. That was
essentially a woman's book. She saw with a woman's keen eye, and
described with a woman's light but graphic pen, the social defects
and absurdities which our near relatives had adopted into their
domestic life. All that she told was worth the telling, and the
telling, if done successfully, was sure to produce a good result.
I am satisfied that it did so. But she did not regard it as a part
of her work to dilate on the nature and operation of those
political arrangements which had produced the social absurdities
which she saw, or to explain that though such absurdities were the
natural result of those arrangements in their newness, the defects
would certainly pass away, while the political arrangements, if
good, would remain. Such a work is fitter for a man than for a
woman, I am very far from thinking that it is a task which I can
perform with satisfaction either to myself or to others. It is a
work which some man will do who has earned a right by education,
study, and success to rank himself among the political sages of his
age. But I may perhaps be able to add something to the familiarity
of Englishmen with Americans. The writings which have been most
popular in England on the subject of the United States have
hitherto dealt chiefly with social details; and though in most
cases true and useful, have created laughter on one side of the
Atlantic, and soreness on the other. if I could do anything to
mitigate the soreness, if I could in any small degree add to the
good feeling which should exist between two nations which ought to
love each other so well, and which do hang upon each other so
constantly, I should think that I had cause to be proud of my work.
But it is very hard to write about any country a book that does not
represent the country described in a more or less ridiculous point
of view. It is hard at least to do so in such a book as I must
write. A de Tocqueville may do it. It may be done by any
philosophico-political or politico-statistical, or statistico-
scientific writer; but it can hardly be done by a man who professes
to use a light pen, and to manufacture his article for the use of
general readers. Such a writer may tell all that he sees of the
beautiful; but he must also tell, if not all that he sees of the
ludicrous, at any rate the most piquant part of it. How to do this
without being offensive is the problem which a man with such a task
before him has to solve. His first duty is owed to his readers,
and consists mainly in this: that he shall tell the truth, and
shall so tell that truth that what he has written may be readable.
But a second duty is due to those of whom he writes; and he does
not perform that duty well if he gives offense to those as to whom,
on the summing up of the whole evidence for and against them in his
own mind, he intends to give a favorable verdict. There are of
course those against whom a writer does not intend to give a
favorable verdict; people and places whom he desires to describe,
on the peril of his own judgment, as bad, ill educated, ugly, and
odious. In such cases his course is straightforward enough. His
judgment may be in great peril, but his volume or chapter will be
easily written.
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