¹ Notions of the Americans: Picked up by a travelling bachelor (Philadelphia, 1828).

² England (2 vols., London and Philadelphia, 1837). A three-volume edition was also published in 1837 in New York. There is a modern edition (New York, 1930) with an introduction and notes by R. E. Spiller.

³ This is the concluding sentence of England.

⁴ Cooper, to Shubrick, William Branford, 8 11 1837Google Scholar. Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, ed. Beard, James F. (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), vol. 3, p. 300Google Scholar. In England he wrote: ‘The American who gets the good word of England is sure of having that of his own country, and he who is abused by England will be certain of being abused at home.’ In a letter to Brown, Bedford, 24 03 1838Google Scholar (Letters and Journals, vol. 3, p. 316), he wrote: ‘In my own case I do know that as long as I was praised by England, I stood well at home, and that, from the moment when, by observation and comparison, I was able to detect that national malignancy of that country to our own, and to point out some of its sophisms and frauds, I began to lose ground with my own countrymen. This dates from 1828, when I published some observations on the hostility of Great Britain to this nation.’

⁵ Cooper could hardly complain if ‘the better classes of America’ took exception to these comments in England but he apparently expected them to accept with equanimity the accusation that they were betraying the interests of their country. Fifteen years later Emerson was disturbed by meeting so many Americans ‘who flattered themselves that they pass for English’ (Journals of R. W. Emerson, ed. , E. W. and Emerson, W. E. (London, 1913), vol. 7, p. 416Google Scholar); so one can understand Cooper's irritation at a time when anglophilia was more pronounced.

⁶ Everett, Edward, Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions (3 vols., Boston, 1850), vol. 2, speech at Bristol, 14 07 1842.Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid., p. 445. Speech to the Agricultural Society at Waltham, 26 September 1842. Everett's official correspondence maintained a strongly anglophile attitude, so far as this was compatible with the representation of American interests. In 1844 he sought to dispel the suggestion that Britain intended to intervene in Texas. This was by no means welcome to President Tyler and his Secretary of State, John C. Calhoun, who were trying to build a case for the annexation of Texas on the expectation of British intervention. Shortly before his replacement in London he told the new American Administration of James K. Polk that the British Government would be ready to settle the Oregon question on the 49th parallel with a southward deviation through the Strait of San Juan de Fuca which ‘has ever been the mode of settling the controversy which I have thought most likely to succeed’ (National Archives, Despatches from U.S. Ministers in Great Britain, Everett, to Buchanan, , 18 04 1845Google Scholar) and in July he assured Buchanan that Mexico would get no support from Britain in the event of a war with the United States (ibid., Everett to Buchanan, 4 July 1845).

⁸ Orations and Speeches, vol. 2, p. 437. Speech at Bristol, , 14 07 1842.Google Scholar

⁹ There were other contradictions. Southerners were often caught between their idealized picture of the English gentry and the miseries of Lancashire factory workers which became an important element in their defence of slavery. As England moved towards freer trade in the 1840s they were also confused by the concept of England's quest for economic dominion over the world. With his customary logic Calhoun linked anti-slavery with designs on the part of England to reduce the rest of the world to economic vassalage.

¹⁰ Everett, , op. cit., vol. 2, p. 654Google Scholar. There being no distinguished English visitor present Everett was asked to reply to the toast of ‘England’. It is highly significant that this toast should have been given at such a celebration of American patriotism.

¹¹ Hidy, Ralph W., The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance: English Merchant Bankers at Work (Cambridge, Mass., 1949).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² Congressional Globe, 26th Congress, 1st Session. Appendix, p. 92. Benton's case was based upon a circular sent by Barings to their American correspondents from which he quoted the following passage: ‘If the whole scheme of internal improvements in the Union is to be carried into effect on the vast scale, and with the rapidity lately projected, and by the means of foreign capital, a more comprehensive guarantee than that of individual States will be required to raise an amount in so short a time. A national pledge would undoubtedly collect capital together from all parts of Europe … It would seem therefore as if most of the States must either pause in the execution of these works of improvement, or some general system of combination must be adopted.’ From the point of view of Barings this was merely a statement of financial fact; but there is no doubt that their existing heavy commitment to state loans made them extremely anxious that some form of national guarantee should be given.

¹³ There was a motion to lay Benton's resolutions on the table; this was lost 25–15 (Congressional Globe, 26th Congress, 1st Session, p. 105) but no debate was reported. The Senate finally passed a resolution that the assumption of state debts ‘either openly, by a direct promise to pay them, or disguisedly by giving security for their payment, or by creating surplus revenue, or by applying national funds to pay for them, would be a gross and flagrant violation of the Constitution’. But a direct reference to foreign interference and to the Baring circular, which Benton had demanded, was dropped; so there may have been some covert influence to avoid giving offence to the ‘moneyed power’.

¹⁴ In 1847 Barings helped the United States Government to find coin for the payment of troops in Mexico. Bancroft, the American minister in London, wrote, ‘I am authorised by Baring Brothers and Co. to write that the Secretary of the Treasury may draw on them for any amount not exceeding three hundred thousand pounds, say one million and a half dollars, beyond any funds of the United States in their hands, and may keep in advance of remittances to that amount’. This credit was used to obtain gold and silver coin for the armies in Mexico (National Archives, Despatches of U.S. Ministers in G.B., 4 January 1847).

¹⁵ There are many examples of this activity in Abel, Annie H. and Klineberg, Frank (eds.), A Side-Light on Anglo-American Relations, 1839–1858, Furnished by the Correspondence of Lewis Tappan and Others with the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (Lancaster, Pa., 1927)Google Scholar. I am also indebted to the unpublished dissertation for the Ph.D. (Cambridge, 1969) by David M. Turley which surveys in detail the relationship between British and American antislavery men from 1837 to 1860.

¹⁶ Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery (Cleveland, 1969), ch. 13 and especially p. 253Google Scholar; Adams, E. D., British Interests and Activities in Texas, 1838–1846 (Baltimore, 1910), pp. 55–60.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Abel, and Klineberg, , op. cit.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Lewis Tappan was also disillusioned by his glimpse of British society in 1843. He was distressed by the state of the London poor, the lack of religious instruction and by the fact that ‘people here, professors & all, do not scruple to use the omnibuses on the Sabbath. They fly in all directions.’ He was somewhat shocked to find that the pious anti-slavery Gurneys lived in great style, with five liveried servants at dinner, and five kinds of wine. Brown, Wyatt, op. cit., pp. 256–61.Google Scholar

¹⁹ The annexationists held a letter from Andrew Jackson, written early in 1843, advising immediate annexation to forestall British intervention in Texas; publication was delayed until the time was ripe and there was some evidence of intended British aggression. When published it proved to be extremely powerful propaganda with rank-and-file Democrats.

²⁰ Duff Green also kept Calhoun informed. Calhoun became Secretary of State after Upshur had been killed by the explosion on S.S. Princeton, but at this time he was out of office and promoting the cause of annexation in the South; he could therefore be relied upon to use the information if Tyler and Upshur failed to do so. See American Historical Association Annual Report 1899, 2, 846.

²¹ As noted above, Everett, the minister in London, believed Aberdeen's denials. Aberdeen was, however, attempting, by co-operation with France and by urging Mexico to recognize Texan independence, to prevent annexation; the sincerity with which he could deny participation in an abolitionist conspiracy helped to conceal his moves to forestall annexation. See Blake, Clagette, Charles Elliot R.N. 1801–1875 (London, 1960), ch. 5, passimGoogle Scholar. Captain Elliot was the British chargé d' affaires in Texas.

²² The leading authority on all aspects of the Oregon question is Frederick J. Merk; a number of his writings, together with new materials, are collected in The Oregon Question: Essays in Anglo-American Diplomacy and Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1967). The argument that the Oregon settlement was linked with the repeal of the British corn laws was advanced by Martin, Thomas P., ‘Free Trade and the Oregon Question, 1842–1846’, in Facts and Factors in Economic History: Articles by former students of Edwin Francis Gay (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), pp. 470–91Google Scholar. Merk, argues (op. cit., pp. 309–36)Google Scholar that the repeal of the corn laws had no effect upon the western expansionists, but that its passage did have some effect in preparing the British to accept a negotiated solution. ‘To America it helped to bring, though only as a British political by-product, the Oregon Treaty of 1846’ (p. 336). The argument that Polk was intimidated by the threat, early in 1846, posed by British naval preparations (argued by Pratt, Julius W., ‘James Knox Polk and John Bull’, Canadian Historical Review, 24 (1943), 341–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar) is considered and rejected by Merk, , op. cit., pp. 337–63.Google Scholar

²³ The debates in Congress are reviewed by Merk, (op. cit., pp. 364–94)Google Scholar. Merk gives most credit for the settlement to Lord Aberdeen and to Lord John Russell, as Foreign Secretaries, and to Edward Everett. Everett provided material for an influential article by Nassau Senior in the London Examiner; the proofs of the article were seen by Aberdeen and Everett sent a copy to Buchanan. Subsequendy an expanded version appeared in the Edinburgh Review (ibid., pp. 287–93). In December 1845 Everett, now out of office, wrote a long personal letter to Russell, Lord John ‘dictated by the feeling, that Peace between the two countries is the great interest of the world, and that its preservation is wrapped up in the folds of your mantle’Google Scholar (ibid., pp. 259–60). Russell, as leader of the Opposition, had earlier made a strong attack upon American policy, but from December 1845, and against the wishes of Palmerston, he committed the Whigs to support of Aberdeen's conciliatory policy.

²⁴ The principal provisions of the Treaty were that neither country would ‘ever obtain or maintain for itself any exclusive control over the said ship canal’, and neither would attempt to build fortifications at either end or establish dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito coast, or any part of Central America. The canal was to be ‘forever open and free, and the capital invested therein secure’. The purpose of the Treaty was stated to be the construction and maintenance of ‘the said canal as a ship communication between the two oceans, for the benefit of mankind, on equal terms for all, and protecting the same’.

²⁵ Quoted Williams, Mary W. in The American Secretaries of State, ed. S. F. Bemis, vol. 6, p. 70Google Scholar. Subsequent difficulties arose because the treaty inhibited expansionist plans in Central America, advocated by some Americans, and because the British denied that it curtailed their existing interests on the Mosquito Coast and modern British Honduras. For these reasons Miss Williams describes it as ‘probably the most persistently unpopular agreement ever made by the United States with a foreign government’ (ibid., p. 69), but she adds that ‘it was, at least, an international agreement with aims not primarily selfish’.

²⁶ Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 1st Session, 6 March 1850.

²⁷ The American Whig Review, not normally an organ of extravagant anti-British views, asked ‘By what asphyxiating power have the pride and individual existence and popular cohesiveness of distant nations so deadened, and the thoughts and hopes, and ambitions of the most thoughtful, hopeful and ambitious of their several peoples, been universally concentrated on “British public opinion,” and a Cockney park on the mud bank of the Anglo-Saxon Acheron? … We are gravely told that the object of every American artisan should be to propitiate British public opinion – to deserve the approval not of his own country, but of Englishmen’ (February 1851, pp. 106–7).

²⁸ New York Herald, 26 November 1850. Quoted Dalzell, Robert F. Jr, American Participation in the Great Exhibition of 1851 (Amherst College Press, 1950).Google Scholar

²⁹ The New York State Commissioner reported that ‘there was nothing from this country to compete with those splendid articles, designed only to minister to the human pride, which comprised so large a portion of the Exhibition; as an American I rejoiced that this was so; and it will be a sad day for our country when articles of this character shall attain a preeminence here, over the useful and necessary, as they do in the Old World.’ Quoted Dalzell, , op. cit.Google Scholar

³⁰ Greeley, Horace, Glances at Europe (New York, 1853), pp. 36–7Google Scholar. In his imagined future ‘Labor shall build, replenish and adorn mansions as stately, as graceful, as commodious as this, not for others' delight and wonderment, but for its own use and enjoyment – for the life-long homes of the builders, their wives, and their children, who shall find within its walls not subsistence merely, but Education, Refinement, Mental Culture, Employment, and seasonable pastime as well’. Greeley's observations also appear, in a slightly different form, as an appendix (‘The Crystal Palace and its Lessons’) in his Hints towards Reform (2nd ed., New York, 1853).

³¹ Everett, , op. cit., vol. 2, p. 653.Google Scholar

³² National Archives, Despatches from United States Ministers in Great Britain. Bancroft, to Buchanan, , 4 10 1847.Google Scholar

³³ De Wolfe Howe, M. A., The Life and Letters of George Bancroft (New York and London, 1908), vol. 2, pp. 23–4Google Scholar. Bancroft, to Buchanan, , 18 10 1847.Google Scholar

³⁴ Ibid., p. 26. Bancroft, to Bryant, William Cullen, 3 11 1847.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid. There are several references to Bancroft's scholarly activities and to his collection of transcripts.

³⁶ National Archives, Bancroft, to Buchanan, , 10 03 1848.Google Scholar

³⁷ Ibid., Bancroft to Buchanan, 30 June 1848.

³⁸ Ibid., Bancroft to Buchanan, 3 March 1847.

³⁹ De Wolfe Howe, , op. citGoogle Scholar. Bancroft, to Prescott, W. H., 11 01 1849.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ English Traits (Riverside, ed., London, 1913), p. 8, ch. I passim.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Nicoleff, Philip, Emerson on Race and History: an Examination of English Traits (New York, 1961), pp. 245–6.Google Scholar

⁴² The quotations are all from English Traits (pp. 150, 150, 129–30, 153, 103, 179). In his Journals he wrote, ‘Everything in England bespeaks an immense population. The buildings are on a scale of size and wealth out of all proportion to ours, the colossal masonry of the docks and of all the public to be accommodated by them and to pay for them.’ (Vol. 7, p. 352.)

⁴³ English Traits, pp. 219–20.

⁴⁴ Ibid., p. 261.

⁴⁵ Ibid., p. 273.

⁴⁶ Ibid., p. 261.

⁴⁷ This article is based on a paper delivered at the Annual Conference of the British Association for American Studies held at the University of East Anglia in April 1970.