Domestic Manners of the Americans

Trollope and company depart Cincinnati by steamboat at the beginning of March 1830, feeling that they have “wasted health, time, and money there” (137). They head for Wheeling (now in West Virginia but then part of Virginia) and in doing so enter the slave-holding territory of the South. Trollope offers her complex impressions of slavery throughout this chapter.

The party remains in Wheeling for two “bleak and disagreeable” days. Then they pick up a stagecoach that takes them through Pennsylvania toward Hagerstown, Maryland—a journey lasting several days with overnight stays at inns. Trollope is impressed by the landscape of the Alleghany Mountains and the variety of trees and foliage.

At Hagerstown, Trollope is pleased by the inn, which offers far better accommodations than in the western states. She and her companions proceed by coach over a bumpy terrain headed for Baltimore, with a broken wheel adding to the journey’s inconveniences.

Approaching Baltimore, Trollope notes a “look” of greater “cultivation” than previously seen. Baltimore itself she finds “a handsome and populous city” (156) with many attractions. She visits the monument to General Washington and the Catholic cathedral and is impressed by their beauty. She also goes to the theater, to a “conference” (Baltimore’s version of a revival), and to an “infant school” (essentially an early kindergarten) established by an Englishman named Mr.