ABSTRACT
When Charles Dickens set sail for America from Liverpool in January 1842, he did so as a known radical who had long hoped to shake hands' with his brothers in the New World'. He focuses his revolted attention on the Senate: Presenting his first impression of America's foremost republican institutions within a rhetorical framework of vivid disgust, Dickens makes no secret of his abhorrence as the personal and political converge in pools of tobacco spit. The political values of equality and liberty were enshrined in the American republic's founding Declaration of Independence, marking it out as a civilized nation. This political and journalistic turn to noisy, raw, and brash populism was disillusioning to those Britons who expected America's progressive political institutions to be accompanied by a refinement of manners and liberal tolerance. Such fears and disappointments appear to have informed Dickens's reading of his encounter with American majoritarianism and with the American people, whom he often found personally invasive.
