American Notes

On January 3, 1842, the narrator, Charles Dickens, boards the steam-packet Britannia in Liverpool, bound for America. He is comically dismayed by the small size of his stateroom, a stark contrast to the agent’s advertisements. After a brief period of calm, the ship is caught in a violent storm. Dickens suffers from a peculiar, lethargic seasickness and recounts a disorienting episode on deck during the tempest. On the fifteenth night, the ship runs aground in a fog near Halifax but is found to be in a safe position. After a brief and pleasant stop in Halifax, the Britannia continues to Boston, arriving on January 22.

Dickens’s first impression of Boston is of a bright, clean, and almost unreal city, which he likens to a pantomime scene. He tours the city’s public institutions, praising them as nearly perfect. At the Perkins Institution for the Blind, he is deeply moved by the story of Laura Bridgman, a girl who is blind, deaf, and dumb, and he quotes at length from the reports of her teacher, Dr. Howe. He also approves of the humane methods used at the State Hospital for the insane and the House of Correction. A day trip to the factory town of Lowell leaves him highly impressed with the health, dignity, and intellectual life of the female mill workers, which he sees as a stark contrast to the degraded condition of English factory laborers.

From Boston, Dickens travels through Worcester and Hartford, where he has several amusing encounters with patients at an insane asylum. He proceeds to New Haven and then boards a large steamboat for New York City. In New York, he observes the city's contrasts, from the bustling life of Broadway to the free-roaming pigs that act as city scavengers. A visit to the city prison, known as The Tombs, and a guided tour of the notorious Five Points slum horrify him with their wretched and inhumane conditions. He also visits the poorly managed Lunatic Asylum on Long Island, whose failings he attributes to political corruption. Finding New York society elegant but ostentatious, he books his passage home for June before continuing his journey.

In Philadelphia, Dickens visits the Eastern Penitentiary. The prison operates on the "Pennsylvania System" of strict, continuous solitary confinement. Dickens declares his profound opposition to this practice, viewing it as a form of mental torture far worse than any physical punishment. He recounts his conversations with several inmates, whose despair, hypocrisy, or complete psychological brokenness serve as evidence of the system's cruelty. He then travels to Washington, D.C., where he finds the American habit of chewing tobacco and spitting to be at its peak. He gives an unflattering description of the capital as a "City of Magnificent Intentions," filled with unfinished avenues and buildings. After visiting the Capitol, he delivers a scathing critique of Congress, condemning its members as corrupt, violent, and hypocritical for defending slavery. He attends a public levee at the President's House before deciding to abandon his southern tour and head west.

Dickens begins his western journey by traveling south to Richmond, Virginia. He is struck by the "air of ruin and decay" that he attributes to the institution of slavery. After visiting a tobacco manufactory staffed by slaves, he returns north and travels from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on a canal-boat. He describes the cramped, communal life on board and the beautiful scenery of the Alleghany Mountains, which the boat crosses via a series of railroad inclined planes. Arriving in Pittsburgh, he boards the steamboat Messenger for Cincinnati. He is oppressed by the "listless, heavy dulness" of his fellow passengers and the gloomy, silent meals. The journey down the Ohio River is marked by desolate scenery, but he is charmed by Cincinnati, which he finds to be a cheerful and thriving city.

Continuing his journey, Dickens has a memorable conversation with Pitchlynn, a chief of the Choctaw tribe, who speaks eloquently of his people's decline. At the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, he is repulsed by the "dismal swamp" of Cairo and gives a powerful, negative description of the Mississippi as an "enormous ditch, running liquid mud." After arriving in St. Louis, he makes an excursion to the Looking-Glass Prairie, but he is disappointed by its "barren monotony." He then begins his long return journey east, traveling by stagecoach across Ohio over a terrible "corduroy road" made of logs. From Sandusky on Lake Erie, he travels by steamboat and train to Niagara Falls, where he is overwhelmed by the majesty of the spectacle, which fills him with a profound sense of peace and tranquility.

Dickens spends ten days on the Canadian side of Niagara before traveling through Toronto, Kingston, Montreal, and Quebec. He is pleasantly surprised by Canada, finding it full of "health and vigour" and "hope and promise." On a steamboat, he is deeply moved by the patient, loving care shown by poor English emigrants for their children. After returning to the United States, he makes a final excursion to a Shaker village in Lebanon, New York, but dislikes their austere and joyless way of life. On June 7, he boards the George Washington in New York to sail for England. He describes a pleasant voyage for the cabin passengers but condemns the exploitative and miserable conditions for the emigrants in steerage. On June 27, the ship sights the coast of Ireland, and after a final breakfast, Dickens arrives in Liverpool and takes a train home.

The book concludes with two thematic chapters. The first of these thematic chapters delivers a passionate and direct denunciation of American slavery. He refutes the justifications offered by slaveholders and uses a long list of newspaper advertisements for runaway slaves, detailing their brands and mutilations, as irrefutable proof of the system's brutality. He argues that this brutality is the root cause of the violence endemic in Southern society. In his final remarks, Dickens praises the American character as naturally brave and hospitable but identifies three major flaws: "Universal Distrust," a love of "smart" dealing, and, most importantly, the corrupting influence of a "licentious Press," which he sees as the greatest obstacle to the nation's moral improvement. He concludes by stating that he has written the truth as he saw it, regardless of how it might be received in America.