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C H A P T E R IO A Slaveowner in a Free Society OR THE ANTEBELLUM AMERICAN, a European journey was an event of far greater moment than it has become in our modern world of rapid, comfortable , and economical travel. The grand tour was usually the occasion of a lifetime . Expected to shape indelibly the voyager's character and attitudes, the journey was an episode recorded, remembered, and widely shared through the popular nineteenth-century genre of the travel account. When on July 16, 1836, James Henry Hammond stood on the deck of the packet ship England and sailed out of the "magnificent bay of New York,"he entertained an assortment of expectations instilled in him by the writings and firsthand accounts of others who had taken this voyage before him. Although his trip had been prescribed as therapy, Hammond's anticipations of the coming months did not focus exclusively on a restoration of his physical well-being. His decision to undertake the risk and discomfort of travel arose from his social and intellectual aspirations as well as his "search after health." A trip to Europe served as evidence of a voyager 's prosperity and as testimony to his cultivation and taste, for the expense was beyond the means of all but a privileged and enlightened few. If Hammond was not to be in Congress pursuing his political ambitions, he could at least be advancing his claims to social and cultural preeminence; he would be improving not just his health, but his mind and his status.1 i. James Henry Hammond European Diary, I (MS vol. bd., 1836-37, JHH Papers, SCL), August 7, 1836; Hammond Medical Diary (MS vol. bd., 1836-37, JHH Papers, SCL). On the packet ship Hammond took from New York, two of the other passengers were keeping journals, and one of these was eventually published. Hammonddescribed his own journal as protectionlest his shipmates F A Slaveowner in a Free Society The first experience of Hammond's therapeutic journey, however, was illness even more debilitating than his previous complaints. On their twenty-day passage to Liverpool, James and Catherine did not once go to the dining room. Rough seas kept them too bilious to leave their beds, and they passed their time "grumbling and repining." From cots placed on the deck they watched Harry, untouched by seasickness, thoroughly enjoying his ocean adventure and winning the favor of the fifteen other passengers aboard.z When the ship docked in Liverpool, the Hammonds disembarked with relief , grateful to be on dry land again. Almost as soon as they acquired clothing warm enough for the unexpectedly chilly English summer, they were off toward London. Uninterested in the busy port city of Liverpool, James was eager to reach Parliament while it was still in session. But on their route through the countryside, they passed by such intriguing sights that Hammond almost forgot this original determination. Even the promise of a certain cure from a specialist Hammond stopped to consult in Leamington Springs seemed less attractive than the castles and monuments Hammond found along his way. He declined to enter the highly recommended three-week therapeutic regime, instead pressing impatiently onward with his sightseeing. Hammond had arrived abroad with a variety of romantic expectations nurtured by his childhood acquaintance with legends of British knights and kings, of Roman splendour, of chivalric dramas that had nourished the spirits of southern youths of his generation. Throughout his journey, he would be visiting sites so often imagined that he expected an elevation of feeling to transport him, permitting a sympathetic experience of the exciting historic and literary events themselves. When he arrived at Warwick Castle on August 10, its battlements evoked visions of feudal warriors. "This is a realization of those pictures of Romance & Poetry which I have been accustomed to dream of from my infancy. . . . To one coming from the wilds of the New World it looks like enchantment itself.'" But Hammond did not see Warwick as simply a vestige of the past. While his try to "caricature me" in theirs. Hammond European Diary, I, August 7, 1836. On Americans on the grand tour, see "American Travelers," Putnam's Monthly, V (June, 1858), 561-76; David Donald , Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: Knopf, 1960), Chap. Ill; Philip Rahv, Introduction, in Discovery of Europe: the Story of American Experience in the Old World (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960). 2. Catherine Fitzsimons Hammond to M. C...

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