A Young Dutchman Views Post--Civil War America: Diary of Claude August Crommelin

Introduction

Introduction During the nineteenth century the United States of America was somewhat of an enigma for Europeans. It was a country where democracy was in full swing, but with a popular sovereignty that frightened many Continentals. In European eyes it was likewise a place of unlimited economic and social possibilities, where an enterprising man could improve himself unhindered by ossified autocratic regimes . This New World Republic was also a developing industrial colossus, with factories and mines and an infrastructure bolstered by an integrated network of post roads and turnpikes, canals and railroads. By the 1850s Ameri­ can technical and business prowess had achieved a position of leadership, and a decade later railroad mileage soared from 9,021 to 30,626 miles, allowing the nation to claim more than half the railroad mileage in the world. At the same time it was a land of unsurpassed natural beauty, with mountains, waterfalls, wide rivers, deep forests, and broad prairies, and a paradise for sporting gentlemen who delighted in bagging wild game, whether passenger pigeons or Ameri­ can bison.1 Small wonder that travelers from Europe crossed the Atlantic to experience this Ameri­ can wonderland. It would be in 1831 that an observant young Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), became arguably the most famous visitor from abroad. In his popular work, Democracy in America (1835), he captured the essence of Ameri­ can values and culture. His commentaries revealed much about the burgeoning Republic, noting that Ameri­ can democracy, while imperfect, was certainly the wave of humanity’s future. His observations prefigured a concept that later became known as Ameri­ can exceptionalism. And Tocqueville’s perceptive­ insights made much of the practical orientation of Ameri­ cans; citizens warmly embraced the notion that an idea means what an idea does. In this democratic so- 2 A Young Dutchman Views Post–Civil War America ciety shortcuts to wealth, labor-­ saving gadgets, and inventions that increased the comfort or pleasure of life “seem the most magnificent effort of human intelligence .”2 WhileTocqueville, Charles Dickens (1812–1870), AnthonyTrollope (1815–1882), and others found a wide, appreciative reading audience with their thoughtful commentaries on America, mass tourism was still something of the future. Yet in the mid-­ nineteenth century well-­ heeled travelers from the Old World could afford to spend a few months in the sprawling new country. It might involve visits to major cities, hunting expeditions, or mostly travel on canal packets, steamboats, or railway cars that gave opportunities for intimate contact with Ameri­ cans and an examination of the expansive landscape.3 It is clear that a transatlantic journey in the 1860s was still something out of the ordinary, indeed something adventurous and not to be taken lightly. Travel was fraught with discomfort, perhaps danger, when the traveler booked passage on a sailing vessel or a primitive steamship. Even though there were established commercial shipping lines to Ameri­ can destinations from British ports, and while Englishmen came in some numbers, Dutchmen did not commonly venture across the high seas. In the 1840s and 1850s, though, scores of Dutch families had made the trek for economic and religious reasons, settling mostly on the Michigan and Iowa farming frontiers. Emigrants were chiefly interested in their physical and economic survival and often were too poorly versed in their own language to write extensively, penning at best simple letters to relatives at home. A trip for pleasure or even for business was unusual. Small wonder, then, that well-­ to-­ do, better educated adventurers not only recorded their experiences in letters but generally kept diaries or journals of sorts. Some of their efforts appeared in print shortly after their return, but in the Netherlands a real market for these publications came only later in the nineteenth century.4 ( ( ( Claude August Crommelin, author of this rare diary of an early Dutch visitor to America, was a scion of a well-­ established French-­ Dutch family.The Crommelins originated in northern France and the southern region of present-­ day Belgium. Being Protestants, some family members emigrated to the north at the end of the sixteenth century and settled in Haarlem in the Protestant Dutch Republic. A new wave of emigrants came after 1685, when King Louis XIV of France ended most rights of these Protestant Huguenots and attempted to have them converted to Roman Catholicism. Yet other branches of the family remained in France, and became useful business contacts for the “Dutch” Crommelins. At least one member of the family crossed the Atlantic and...