ABSTRACT
2We know that there is a vast continent across the Atlantic, first discovered by a Genoese sailing under the Spanish flag, and that for many years past it has swallowed up thousands of the hardiest of our population. Although our feelings are not particularly fraternal, we give the people ... the national cognomen of ‘Brother Jonathan’, while we name individuals ‘Yankees’. We know that they are famous for smoking, spitting, ‘gouging’, and bowie-knives – for monster hotels, steamboat explosions, railway collisions, and repudiated debts. It is believed also that this nation is renowned for keeping three millions of Africans in slavery – for wooden nutmegs, paper money, and ‘fillibuster’ expeditions ... I went to the States with that amount of prejudice which seems the birthright of every English person, but I found that... these prejudices gradually melted away. I found much which is worthy of commendation, even of imitation : that there is much which is very reprehensible, is not to be wondered at in a country which for years has been made ... a refuge for those who have ‘left their country for their country’s good’ – a receptacle for the barbarous, the degraded, and the vicious of all other nations (Bishop, 2-3).
