An American Evangelist in Great Britain

Extract

When Sidney Smith posed his long list of rhetorical questions about America in the Edinburgh Review, he did not specifically mention preachers though there were some clergymen in the list he put forth; but we can assume that he no more expected his readers to listen to an American sermon than to read an American book.

But, while he was writing, forces were gathering in America that were to have considerable influence on Great Britain. That the United States was ‘a cultural province’ of Great Britain was true for long after the Revolution but the cultural influence was not limited to receiving. By the middle of the nineteenth century there was already a considerable impact by America on Great Britain. It was not perhaps at the level of the learned and distinguished; but there were many who had not read Mrs. Trollope's diatribes or listened to Charles Dickens's complaints, who were prepared to learn from America. True, much of their information was prejudiced, much of it gave them a sense of moral superiority over those wicked American slaveowners; yet they knew there were many in America who felt as they felt, were moved by the same zeal as moved them, and loved the same things as they loved.