Written in the face of immense obstacles during the Civil War, this book was Trollope's defence of the Union and the North's right to preserve it. Consequently, unlike his mother's book on American manners written 30 years earlier, it was well received in America, but met with a certain amount of British hostility. Trollope looked beneath the surface of what he first saw as a savage country and discovered that what the British would consider barbarism and lack of deference could be attributed to equality and the pride of the individual.