America250: Histories, Memoirs, and Travelogues - 1800s

 

  One of the most often cited defining traits of Americans is restlessness.  From nomadic Native Americans to the European colonizers and immigrants crossing oceans to start new lives to space exploration, Americans have seemed to share the desire to move, to explore, to test frontiers, and to push boundaries.  That trait has inspired many contributions to a huge literary nonfiction genre, travelogues.  It's one of my favorite genres, especially the travelogues that blend history, memoir, encounters and conversations with a wide range of Americans, and keen observations about American history, culture, and attitudes.  This is the first of a series of posts about some of the books that fit this genre.  In some, authors re-trace paths of historic explorers, while some authors set out with a particular theme or mission in mind.  Some  are histories of famous treks in American history and the explorers who did the trekking.  A few are journals and primary accounts written by the actual participants, and there are a few works of fiction as well.

    Here's a selection of books from and about the 19th century.  It's nowhere close to an exhaustive list, just books that I've read and encountered. 

 Few books are quoted more and read less than Democracy in America, a classic 1835 and 1840 book (published in two volumes, first focusing on politics and second focusing on society and culture) by French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville, following his extended visit in 1831. Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont were sent by the French government to study the American prison system, but Tocqueville's observations expanded to cover all aspects of American life. He explored the successes and failures of American democracy, focusing on equality, individualism, and the role of civil society, and his observations on topics like race, the press, and the potential threats to democracy remain highly relevant today. Tocqueville sought to understand what the rise of democracy meant for the future of humanity, as he saw America as a model for the world. The book is famous for its uncanny predictions and insights into American identity,  

In Discovery of America, Leo Damrosch retraces Tocqueville's nine month visit and provides vivid context.

                                

One of the most celebrated treks in American history was that undertaken by the Corps of Discovery from 1804 to 1806.  Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were commissioned by President Jefferson to make a detailed exploration of the newly acquired Louisiana Territory.  On May 15, 1804, 45 men set out on three boats, completing their trip in 2 years and 4 months, mapping the territory, making contact with distant tribes, and collecting hundreds of specimens and natural observations of flora, fauna, and landforms previously undreamed of in the East.  Their extensive journals were published, and there have been many, many books about the journey.  One of the best is Undaunted Courage  by Stephen Ambrose.  This Vast Enterprise is a brand new (published April, 2026) "revisionist" history of the expedition, and it's on my list to read.  

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Daniel Boone was one of the first American real-life folk heroes, a pioneer, explorer, and trailblazer whose true life is still overshadowed by myths today. Essentially, he was a man who just wanted to distance himself from other people and to live independently, but he ended up contributing to the American habit of expanding the frontier.  Blood and Treasure is a great biography.  A little later and farther west, other men became legendary pathfinders, including John Fremont who was nicknamed "The Pathfinder."  Blood and Thunder and Imperfect Union are excellent biographies of Kit Carson and Fremont respectively, and you can't go wrong with any book by historian H.W. Brands.  Dreams of El Dorado is an excellent history of westward exploration from fur trappers in Oregon territory through the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush.  

                                 

                          

Throughout the 19th century, migrants drawn westward along the wagon trails often relied on manuals and memoirs written by pioneering migrants and other experts.  Some were a bit romanticized and may have misled travelers into making a journey for which they were not suited, and some were written or sponsored by railroad companies or other developers who published them for the express purpose of luring settlers.  Some of these books were very specific, offering essential survival information.  Many of these books have been reprinted over the years.

   

 Of course, white settlers who moved west didn't travel in a vacuum.  Their treks west either precipitated or resulted from the forced  expulsion of Native Americans from their traditional homes to new restrictive, foreign, and often barren lands.  Because of warfare, forced treaties, and the Indian Removal Act, thousands of Indians of Indians were forced to move, causing thousands of deaths and economic and social transformations with huge impacts still felt today. 

There are a number of memoirs and histories of slavery , but three books came to mind that fit into the category of historical journeys.  In 1853, Solomon Northup published a memoir detailing  his tragic personal odyssey.  Northup, a black musician born free and living in New York, was lured to Washington DC, kidnapped, and sold into slavery, eventually ending up on a plantation in Louisiana.  12 Years a Slave became a major success and an important part of abolitionist literature.  One of the most interesting escapes from slavery was masterminded and executed by Ellen and William Craft who disguised themselves as a young sickly white slaveowner and "his" enslaved caretaker and took trains and boats from Macon, Georgia to freedom.  Ilyon Woo details their escape in Master Slave Husband Wife.  In 2010, Joseph McGill Jr founded the Slave Dwelling Project to illuminate the lives of enslaved people across the country and gave himself the mission  of touring the country and spending the night in former slave living quarters.  Sleeping with the Ancestors is the account of his effort.

Following the Civil War, many formerly enslaved black Americans took to the road.  Some sought to escape oppression, some sought opportunity -whether economic or just the opportunity to be free and independent, and some sought family members who had been taken from them during slavery.  Many of these people moved to wide open spaces of the West, establishing homesteads and even all black towns; these people were called Exodusters.  Nell Irvin Painter's book is considered the classic standard history of the Exodusters, particularly those who settled in Kansas.  William Loren Katz also published several books about black pioneers and homesteaders.  A more recent book, Last Seen, documents the efforts made by people to reunite with relatives and friends throughout Reconstruction and the Gilded Age.

  

Other foreign visitors to the United States published books about their travels and observations during the 1800s.  In 1842, British novelist Charles Dickens traveled extensively in the US, often performing readings along the way.  Like de Tocqueville, Dickens found a lot to admire in the young republic, but he also made humorous, critical, and insightful comments.  Fanny Kemble was an English actress who met and married a rich and powerful South Carolina planter named Pierce Butler in 1834.  Butler owned large rice and cotton plantations in southeast Georgia and enslaved hundreds of people, but he was largely an absentee owner, spending most of the year in Philadelphia, where they married and lived until 1838.  In Philadelphia, Kemble was exposed to Quaker abolitionism and began to question her husband's lifestyle,  In 1838, he took her to Georgia, and she saw and experienced slavery firsthand.  She became even more of an abolitionist and journaled extensively about what she saw and lived.  Tensions grew between her and Butler, who used their children as leverage to keep her in check, threatening to take their children if she ever published her journal or caused trouble for him.  They finally divorced in 1849, and he retained custody, pretty customary at the time, and she withheld publication until 1863.  When published, her journal became an important element in swaying British public opinion against the Confederacy.  

Before his classic American novels, Mark Twain wrote classic travelogues that are still widely read today.  His dispatches and stories were widely published in newspapers across the country and abroad.  

Life on the Mississippi is a memoir by Mark Twain of his days as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River before the American Civil War published in 1883. It is also a travel book, recounting his trips on the Mississippi River, from St. Louis to New Orleans and then from New Orleans to Saint Paul, many years after the war.  Roughing It follows the travels of young Mark Twain through the American West during the years 1861–1867. He joined his brother Orion Clemens, who had been appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory, on a stagecoach journey west. Twain consulted his brother's diary to refresh his memory and borrowed heavily from his imagination for many stories in the book. 

Inspired by Mark Twain, Rinker Buck built a wooden flatboat in the early 1800s style and sailed it down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, chronicling his journey.  Honestly, I thought the book was marred because Buck got extremely, and unnecessarily, political.  I much preferred his 2015 book for which he traveled 2,000 miles following the Oregon Trail in a covered mule-drawn wagon.  The just-published American Rambler was an enjoyable read ostensibly about the life, travels, and legends of Johnny Appleseed.  However, it's a little too light on the actual history and travelogue and too much of the author's personal memoir.