"
The crudity of American life and manners had been sarcastically
described by Ashe, Fearon, Davis, and other European travellers.
American writers countered these attacks by comparing the treatment
of the slaves in America with the condition of British paupers and
East Indians. Charges of negro kidnapping were contrasted with
child-stealing in England; our gouging the eyes in fisticuffs with
their prize-fighting; the harshness of our slave code with their
criminal laws; and the condition of our free clergy with the
circumscribed established clergymen. A dispute arose between writers
of the two countries over the responsibility of England for American
slavery by having fostered it in the American colonies.
This war of words, which continued even after the close of hostilities
with England, went so far as to involve discussions whether Godfrey
or Hadley had invented the quadrant; whether Hulls or Fulton was the
father of the steamboat; whether steamboats were first used in England
or America; and whether Fulton should have offered his invention of
the submarine torpedo to France as well as to England.
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