The contest over American democracy: British travelers on the American frontier and the American response, 1815--1850

This dissertation analyzes British commentary regarding the United States, in particular the creation of British images of the frontiers of America from the end of the War of 1812 to approximately 1850. Sources examined include British travel accounts and three of the most important periodical reviews of the time, the Edinburgh Review, Quarterly Review, and Westminster Review. The locales studied include the United States-Canadian border, the old Southwest cotton frontier, and Morris Birkbeck's English Prairie in southeastern Illinois. The primary goal is to reveal the process of how Britons created images of the American frontier. The self-referential qualities of British commentary on the American frontier are studied for better understanding contemporary hopes and fears of the expanding United States and what was perceived by many to be a democratic future in for Great Britain. The influence of American sources upon the creation of the travel accounts is also examined.;The responses of leading American periodicals and a national newspaper to the onslaught of British criticism are also probed. Examined are the North American Review, the Knickerbocker, United States Magazine and Democratic Review, and Nile's Weekly Register. The perspectives of the reviews, some Anglophile, others Anglophobic, are examined within the broader context of their respective political outlook and position within the literary world. The role of British criticism in the creation of American literary nationalism during the half-century before the Civil War is a primary focus.