Globalization of the United States, 1789-1861

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Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company; New York: J.C. Derby, 1854.

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Harriet Beecher Stowe. Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company; New York: J.C. Derby, 1854. p. 1:1.

Feted as an abolitionist celebrity during a tour of Britain and the European continent, Stowe contributed to a shift from Anglophobia to Anglophilia in American culture.

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Now, if all this enthusiasm for freedom and humanity, in the person of the American slave, is to be set down as good for nothing in England, because there are evils there in society which require redress, what then shall we say of ourselves? Have we not been enthusiastic for freedom in the person of the Greek, the Hungarian, and the Pole, while protecting a much worse despotism than any from which they suffer? Do we not consider it our duty to print and distribute the Bible in all foreign lands, when there are three millions of people among whom we dare not distribute it at home, and whom it is a penal offence even to teach to read it? Do we not send remonstrances to Tuscany, about the Madiai, when women are imprisoned in Virginia for teaching slaves to read? Is all this hypocritical, insincere, and impertinent in us? Are we never to send another missionary, or make another appeal for foreign lands, till we have abolished slavery at home? For my part, I think that imperfect and inconsistent outbursts of generosity and feeling are a great deal better than none. No nation, no individual is wholly consistent and Christian; but let us not in ourselves or in other nations repudiate the truest and most beautiful developments of humanity, because we have not yet attained perfection.

All experience has proved that the sublime spirit of foreign missions always is suggestive of home philanthropies, and that those whose heart has been enlarged by the love of all mankind are always those who are most efficient in their own particular sphere.