this distant region. He died in 1829. His Letters are eminently sane and sensible. His comments upon the American character are appreciative and kindly, his chief strictures being upon the subject of slavery.

The major portion of our volume is devoted to a reprint of John Woods's Two Years' Residence ... in the Illinois Country (London, 1822), detailing with precision the experiences of a well-to-do English farmer seeking a home in the new world. Woods was a matter-of-fact person, whose book has no pretensions to literary style; but it does present faithfully the average Englishman's impressions of persons and things in the United States of 1819-21. Landing in Baltimore, Woods bought conveyances that transported his family and goods over the new National Road to Wheeling, whence a flat-boat furnished their means of carriage down the Ohio River to Shawneetown, then the principal port of Illinois. From this point the immigrants walked overland to English Prairie, sending the baggage around by way of the Wabash and its tributaries. Arrived at the settlement, Woods bought of American pioneers lands that had already received some cultivation, and settled contentedly to build up a new farm in these rich regions. His experiences were typical; and while he expressly disclaims attempting to influence others intending to remove from England, yet his favorable pictures could not have failed of their effect.

His comments upon American life are shrewd and kindly. On the whole, he says, "we have received as good treatment as we should have in a tour through England; but the manners of Americans are more rough than those of Englishmen." Gifted with penetration that permitted him to discover the good qualities beneath the rude exterior, he makes an interesting portrayal of the backwoodsman, giving us an amusing although not a sarcastic record of an imaginary conversation imbued with some of the peculiar Americanisms of his time. More interesting, perhaps, from the point of view of our series, is the account he gives of the towns on the Ohio, and the progress of settlement, compared with those of the travellers of 1803-09. He finds older towns falling into decay, new ones springing into existence, and over it all the trail of the speculator. The extent and cheapness of public lands is a subject for comment, and the land laws and methods of survey are minutely detailed.

In view of the strictures of later English writers, their flippant comments and inappreciative criticisms, the plain, straightforward descriptions of these farmers of English Prairie give a just and wholesome account of the American West at the beginning of the third decade of the nineteenth century. One further service the English settlers performed for Illinois, and civilization. When a new constitution for the state was agitated—one that should admit slavery to its borders—it was the sturdy opposition of the English leaders that turned the scale in favor of freedom. In this struggle (1824-25), Morris Birkbeck once more met his friend Edward Coles, now become governor of Illinois. Although a Virginian, Coles was opposed to the extension of slavery, and stood shoulder to shoulder with Birkbeck in this great fight. Largely to English devotion to free institutions, it was due that the attempt to foist the "peculiar institution" upon the new West failed, and the state which was to shelter and train Abraham Lincoln was made a free land.

In the preparation of notes to this volume, the Editor has had the assistance of Louise Phelps Kellogg, Ph.D., Edith Kathryn Lyle, Ph.D., and Mr. Archer Butler Hulbert.

R. G. T.

Madison, Wis., November, 1904.

Hulme's Journal of a Tour in the Western Countries of America—September 30, 1818-August 8, 1819.

Extracted and reprinted from William Cobbett's A Year's Residence in the United States of America: London, 1828.

{259} DEDICATION
To TIMOTHY BROWN, Esq.
OF PECKHAM LODGE, SURREY

North Hempstead, Long Island,
10th Dec. 1818.

MY DEAR SIR,

The little volume here presented to the public, consists, as you will perceive, for the greater and most valuable part, of travelling notes made by our friend Hulme, whom I had the honour to introduce to you in 1816, and with whom you were so much pleased.

His activity, which nothing can benumb; his zeal against the twin monster, tyranny and priestcraft, which nothing can cool; and his desire to assist in providing a place of retreat for the oppressed, which nothing but the success in the accomplishment can satisfy; these have induced him to employ almost the whole of his time here in various ways all tending to the same point.

The Boroughmongers have agents and spies all over the inhabited globe. Here they cannot sell blood: they can only collect information and calumniate the people of both countries. These vermin our friend firks out (as the Hampshire people call it); and they hate him as rats hate a terrier.

Amongst his other labours, he has performed a very laborious journey to the Western Countries, and has been as far as the Colony {260} of our friend Birkbeck. This journey has produced a Journal; and this Journal, along with the rest of the volume, I dedicate to you in testimony of my constant remembrance of the many, many happy hours I have spent with you, and of the numerous acts of kindness which I have received at your hands. You were one of those, who sought acquaintance with me, when I was shut up in a felon's jail for two years for having expressed my indignation at seeing Englishmen flogged, in the heart of England, under a guard of German bayonets and sabres, and when I had on my head a thousand pounds fine and seven years' recognizances. You, at the end of the two years, took me from the prison, in your carriage, home to your house. You and our kind friend, Walker, are even yet, held in bonds for my good behaviour, the seven years not being expired. All these things are written in the very core of my heart; and when I act as if I had forgotten any one of them, may no name on earth be so much detested and despised as that of

{261} PREFACE

In giving an account of the United States of America, it would not have been proper to omit saying something of the Western Countries, the Newest of the New Worlds, to which so many thousands and hundreds of thousands are flocking, and towards which the writings of Mr. Birkbeck have, of late, drawn the pointed attention of all those Englishmen, who, having something left to be robbed of, and wishing to preserve it, are looking towards America as a place of refuge from the Boroughmongers and the Holy Alliance, which latter, to make the compact complete, seems to want nothing but the accession of His Satanic Majesty.

I could not go to the Western Countries; and the accounts of others were seldom to be relied on; because,