Retrospect of Western Travel, Volume II

Retrospect of Western Travel, Volume II is the second volume of Harriet Martineau’s substantial account of her travels in the United States in 1834 and 1836. Martineau, the English writer and social commentator who lived from 1802 to 1876, had become a major public figure with the success of her Illustrations of Political Economy in the early 1830s, and her American tour gave her the opportunity to apply her social and economic interests to direct observation of the new republic across the Atlantic.

Martineau spent nearly two years in the United States, traveling extensively through the northern, southern, and western states. She met with major American political and intellectual figures including former president James Madison and various of the major political figures of the Jackson era, and she observed at first hand the social institutions, the economic arrangements, and the religious and cultural life of a country that British observers were finding increasingly important to understand. The Retrospect was her more personal travel narrative of these years and complemented her more systematic Society in America of 1837, which presented her sociological analysis of American institutions in a more theoretical framework.

The second volume covers the later phases of her travels, particularly her time in the southern states and the western territories. The southern sections are among the most important parts of the book, since Martineau had become deeply engaged with the abolitionist movement during her American visit and her observations of slavery and of slave society in the South are substantial. She was openly sympathetic to the abolitionist cause and the book contributed to the transatlantic abolitionist movement at a moment when American abolitionism was still developing its national organization. The western sections describe the rapidly expanding settlement of the trans Appalachian territories and the various social and political questions that the western expansion was raising.

Martineau wrote in a direct strong English that was unusual for a Victorian woman writer of the period. She was deaf for most of her adult life and conducted her interviews through an ear trumpet, which oddly intensified rather than diminished her ability to observe carefully and to record what she heard.

The volume runs to several hundred pages and is best read in chapter sized pieces. For readers interested in nineteenth century British observation of America, this is one of the most important works of the period. It pairs naturally with the first volume of the Retrospect and with the more analytical Society in America.