Domestic Manners of the Americans

Given the pettiness of most of her criticisms, it seems clear that Frances Trollope’s memoir of her 1827-1830 visit to America was primarily a cynical attempt to capitalize on the high demand in Britain for anti-American books. Still, a few of her arguments hit the mark, especially her criticisms of the treatment of Native Americans and African Americans (“The idea of really sympathizing in the sufferings of a slave appeared to them as absurd as weeping over a calf that had been slaughtered by the butcher”).