Flint's Letters from America, 1818-1820

A Series of Annotated Reprints of some of the best and rarest contemporary volumes of travel, descriptive of the Aborigines and Social and Economic Conditions in the Middle and Far West, during the Period of Early American Settlement
Edited with Notes, Introductions, Index, etc., by
Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D.
Editor of “The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents,” “Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” “Hennepin’s New Discovery,” etc.
Volume IX
Flint’s Letters from America, 1818-1820
Cleveland, Ohio
The Arthur H. Clark Company
1904
Copyright 1904, by THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Lakeside Press R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY CHICAGO
Had all the travellers from Great Britain who visited America during the early decades of the nineteenth century been of so discriminating a temperament as the Scotchman whose work we republish as volume ix of our series, Americans might have lacked that sensitiveness that arose from unjust and flippant portrayal and criticism of American manners.
James Flint was of a good family, had been carefully educated, and possessed a sound and just judgment, with capacity for philosophic insight. Coming to the United States to observe conditions, he depicts them with candor and good will. While confessing favorable preconceptions, due to a personal liking for democratic institutions, our author does not omit the shadows in his pictures; but he presents them with such dispassionate fairness that the sting of criticism is removed.