An Englishman's Travels in the United States: His Observations of Life and Manners in the Free and Slave States (1857)
John Benwell is from England and spent four years in the U.S. Among other places he visited were New York, Ohio (Cincinnati), Missouri (St. Louis) and New Orleans, among other places. He traveled around 3000 miles in total.
Apparently there was a problem later in Florida.
His trip to the U.S. featured bad weather and an encounter with an iceberg. He lands in New York and gets off the ship. There's an interesting section about his observations on an auctioneer. He saw hundreds of blacks who he assumed were laborers.
He got to see Daniel Webster though he didn't get to shake hands with him.
He has some interesting comments about the newspapers in New York. Things haven't changed much at all.
He remarks about how unsafe travel is in the U.S. and how people don't seem to worry about it all that much. He writes about the various steamboat explosions that caused considerable loss of life. He also remarks about how vulgar the men passengers were, especially in their use of chewing tobacco.
He mentions how Canada acts as the last hope of runaway slaves.
He comments about some Native Americans that he saw.
He remarks about hotels and cafes in the slave states. He also writes about pedlars, one of whom cheated a guy but taking a quilt from a room and selling it to his wife. He also writes about problems settlers had with the Native Americans, and about a plague of locusts.
He then went on to Cincinnati which he called 'the fairy city of the West' and the largest city in the state.
He then went on a riverboat to St. Louis and writes about the gambling done on the boat.
He writes about vegetarianism and how people are really carnivores.
He then writes about a murder committed on board the boat. A black man killed a white waiter by knifing him (the waiter died a few days later.) The author seems to think that the main cause of what happened was the way blacks were treated on the boat. He then writes about how the government is often in wars with the Native Americans. He also discusses the Revolutionary War and things that went on like American citizen-soldiers ambushing any British stragglers and one particular instance of their murdering one.
He writes about how he saw one female slave whipped. He also found out that the woman was pregnant when she was whipped. Then he witnesses a situation where a white guy got in trouble over doing something to a neighbor's horse and was tarred-and-feathered. He describes the scene in detail, then adds the blacks there 'danced with joy' at seeing a white man so treated.
He then describes how he watched a black woman and her two children sold at an auction. The woman was bought and then the two children were bought to two other guys. This was while he was still in St. Louis.
He then writes about the men who oversee the slaves.
He gets to New Orleans and another scene of barbarity awaits him. He obviously doesn't care for the city and talks at length about the yellow fever that is there and how uncivilized the men act.
A quadroon is someone who was only 1/4th black. When their beauty begins to fade, though, he notes that they are then sold off by their masters. He then proceeds to travel through Florida which, at the time, was apparently pretty much a wilderness. He and the others he are with are in danger from Native Americans, escaped blacks and even wolves. He encountered one runaway slave who told him there were hundreds of slaves fighting with the Native Americans against the whites.
He also notes that the whites were scalping the Native Americans at time during battles. He later makes reference to some instance in which blacks attacked Charleston, set fires and killed people. When that was over the various blacks involved were given trials and then killed.
A curfew had been put into place for blacks with severe consequences for disobedience. He adds that, in George, if a black hit a white with his hand, the black person's hand was cut off.
Two other laws. Another was that it was illegal to educate blacks.
Apparently white women didn't have much of any object to their husbands having sex with his female slaves as long as he kept his wife properly.
He doesn't seem to think highly of Jews.
He also writes about the kinds of peer pressures put on any men who try to associate with Blacks, and he himself was afraid of any consequences to his person if he tried to do so too openly. He notes the type of 'filthy language' that was used by man men and that, in England, such language would have gotten them thrown out of the club they were in. He also notes how angry the men became when someone read an abolitionist tract that had been found.
He uses the term 'social police' to describe the men who make it their business to stamp out any form of abolitionist sentiment.
There were also strong feelings about a white man marrying a black woman.
He talked to a guy about the idea of being kind to slaves and this is the reply he got.
He notes a newspaper article about a black that was killed.
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