Frances Trollope

Frances Trollope, a successful English author and the mother of novelist Anthony Trollope, lived for a time in Cincinnati. She won great acclaim as the author of a critical-minded study, Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), a best-seller in Europe and the United States.

I found the opportunity I had long wished for, of attending a camp-meeting, … in a wild district on the confines of Indiana. …

One of the preachers began in a low nasal tone, and, like all other Methodist preachers, assured us of the enormous depravity of man as he comes from the hands of his Maker, and of his perfect sanctification after he had wrestled sufficiently with the Lord. … The admiration of the crowd was evinced by almost constant cries of “Amen! Amen!” “Jesus! Jesus!” “Glory! Glory!” and the like. … [T]he preacher told them that “this night was the time fixed upon for anxious sinners to wrestle with the Lord” … and that such as needed their help were to come forward. …

[A]bove a hundred persons, nearly all females, came forward, uttering howlings and groans, so terrible that I shall never cease to shudder when I recall them. They appeared to drag each other forward, and on the word being given, “let us pray,” they all fell on their knees; but this posture was soon changed for others that permitted greater scope for the convulsive movements of their limbs. …

Many of these wretched creatures were beautiful young females. The preachers moved about among them, at once exciting and soothing their agonies. … I watched their tormentors breathing into their ears consolations that tinged the pale cheek with red. Had I been a man, I am sure I should have been guilty of some rash act of interference; nor do I believe that such a scene could have been acted in the presence of Englishmen, without instant punishment being inflicted … to check so turbulent and vicious a scene.

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The critics who have from time to time reproached me with undue severity in my strictures on the domestic manners of the Americans have said that a candid examination of matters at home would have shown me that what I reprobated might be found in England, as well as in the United States. In most cases I have felt that this might be rebutted … by showing that what I complained of in the Union as indicative of imperfect civilisation, [whereas] if existing at all with us, could only be met with among persons in a much lower station of life. …

But on the subject treated in the present chapter, justice compels me to avow that no such pleading can avail me. That such fearful profanation of the holy name of religion has rapidly increased among us since the year 1827, in which I quitted England for America, is most sadly certain. … [Yet, the bishops of the Church of England protect us from many excesses, while in America the lack of an established] national church, and of that guardian protection which its episcopal authority seems to promise against its desecration by the ever-varying innovations of sectarian licence, appeared to account for all the profanations I witnessed.

Source: Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (London: Whittaker, Treacher, 1832), 139, 142–144; the material following the asterisks comes from ibid., 5th ed. (London: R. Bentley, 1839), chapter 8.