Primary Source Documents

A European Nobleman Encounters American Republicanism^*

In describing her travels in the United States, Frances Trollope reported the following experience of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, who toured this country from 1825 to 1826. The well-mannered Duke, she maintained, "could not escape the dislike which every trace of gentlemanly feeling is sure to create among the ordinary class of Americans." Terming such behavior "a national degradation," she condemned the American habit of putting down all aristocratic pretensions.

A correspondent of the Charlestown Gazette tells an anecdote connected with the Duke of Saxe-Weimar's recent journey through our country.…The scene occurred on the route between Augusta and Milledgeville; it seems that the sagacious Duke engaged three or four, or more seats in the regular stage for the accommodation of himself and suite, and thought by this that he had secured the monopoly of the vehicle. Not so, however; a traveller came along, and entered his name upon the book, and secured his seat by payment of the customary charges. To the Duke's great surprise, on entering the stage, he found our traveller comfortably housed in one of the most eligible seats, wrapped up in his fearnought [i.e., woolen coat], and snoring like a buffalo. The Duke, greatly irritated, called for the question of consideration. He demanded, in broken English, the cause of the gross intrusion, and insisted in a very princely manner, though not, it seems, in very princely language, upon the incumbent vacating the seat in which he had made himself so impudently at home.

But the Duke had yet to learn his first lesson of republicanism. The driver was one of those sturdy southrons, who can always, and at a moment's warning, whip his weight in wild cats: and he as resolutely told the Duke that the traveller was as good, if not a better man than himself, and that no alteration of the existing arrangement could be permitted. Saxe-Weimar became violent at this opposition, so unlike any to which his education had ever subjected him, and threatened John with the application of the bamboo.…Down leaped our driver from his box, and peeling himself for the combat, he leaped about the vehicle in the most wild-boar style, calling upon the prince of a five-acre patch to put his threat in execution. But he of the star refused to make up [the] issue in the way suggested, contenting himself with assuring the enraged southron of a complaint to his excellency the Governor, on arrival at the seat of government. This threat was almost as unlucky as the former, for it wrought the individual for whom it was intended into that species of fury which, though discriminating in its madness, is nevertheless without much limit in its violence, and he swore that the Governor might go to — , and for his part he would just as leave lick the Governor as the Duke; he'd like no better fun than to give both Duke and Governor a dressing in the same breath; could do it, he had little doubt, &c. &c.; and instigating one fist to diverge into the face of the marvelling and panic-stricken nobleman, with the other he thrust him down into a seat alongside the traveller, whose presence had been originally of such sore discomfort to his excellency, and bidding the attendants jump in with their discomfited master, he mounted his box in triumph, and went on his journey.

From Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, (1832).

1		What attitudes and assumptions does the Duke of Saxe-Weimar hold concerning the proper ordering of society? How do his attitudes differ from those of the stagecoach driver?
2		Why does the writer use the term "republicanism" in describing the driver's behavior? What does the author mean by saying that this incident was a lesson in republicanism?
3		What is the relationship between the driver's attitudes about social equality and his views about political equality? How do these attitudes reinforce one another? What does this account say about the nature of politics in the Jacksonian era?
4		Why did European visitors react so strongly to the popular attitudes illustrated in this story? How would an American interpret this scene?
5		What value do European travel accounts have for historians?