Trollope’s biting critique became an international sensation, hailed for its fearlessness and humor and decried for its slanderous audacity. You will see them one hour lecturing their mob on the indefeasible rights of man, and the next driving from their homes the children of the soil, whom they have bound themselves to protect by the most solemn treaties.” Expecting a Utopia of “justice and liberty for all,” she is shocked to discover the contradictions at the heart of the American character, especially when it comes to their treatment of slaves and Native Americans: “You will see them with one hand hoisting the cap of liberty,” Trollope writes, “and with the other flogging their slaves. In 1832, three years before Alexis de Tocqueville published Democracy in America, the English novelist Frances Trollope released Domestic Manners of the Americans, an eye-opening record of her travels in the young republic.
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