The book created a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, as Frances Trollope had a caustic view of the Americans and found America strongly lacking in manners and learning. She was appalled by America's egalitarian middle-class and by the influence of evangelicalism that was emerging during the Second Great Awakening. Trollope was also harshly critical of slavery of African Americans in the United States, and by the popularity of tobacco chewing, and the consequent spitting, even on carpets.
After seeing much of what the United States had to offer, her overall impression was not favourable. At the end of the book, she tried to summarise what she found wrong in the American character:
A single word indicative of doubt, that any thing, or every thing, in that country, is not the very best in the world, produces an effect which must be seen and felt to be understood. If the citizens of the United States were indeed the devoted patriots they call themselves, they would surely not thus encrust themselves in the hard, dry, stubborn persuasion, that they are the first and best of the human race, that nothing is to be learnt, but what they are able to teach, and that nothing is worth having, which they do not possess.
