Liverpool, Adam Hodgson (1788–1862)

Born in Liverpool, Adam Hodgson (1788–1862) was an English merchant, travel writer, and abolitionist. His father, Thomas Hodgson (1737–1817), profited from the Atlantic Slave Trade, with interests in Gambia, before moving into cotton manufacturing. In contrast to their father, Adam and his brother Isaac (1783–1847) became involved in the abolitionist movement in Liverpool. Isaac was secretary of Liverpool Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and Adam was a member. The latter also wrote against slavery in local magazines and pamphlets, and condemned slavery in his travel writing, saying that nothing ‘can eradicate from slavery the evils inherent in its very nature, nor familiarity reconcile man to perpetual bondage’.

It was also Hodgson’s travel writing that would make the most important contribution to British Mayflower literature. Published in 1824, Letters from North America Written During a Tour in the United States and Canada chronicled his experiences in early nineteenth-century America. The work contains an extended account of the ‘second Centenary Anniversary’ for the landing of the ‘Pilgrim Fathers’. Hodgson recounts some of the toasts and public addresses that featured at the event:

"In the course of the morning, we passed within 19 miles of Plymouth, where the Pilgrim Fathers landed about 200 years ago. The second Centenary Anniversary was celebrated there a few weeks since, and an immense concourse of people assembled. The following are a few of the toasts which were given on that occasion.
'The character of William Penn – like that of an American autumn – mild – calm – bright – abounding in good fruits'
'Old times – old folks – old records – and OLD COLONY'
'Literature; Antiquities of New England; Elliot’s Indian Bible, writ with but one pen-Newman’s Concordance, compiled by the light of pine knots'
'The Rock of Plymouth. May it be trodden two thousand years hence, by as worthy feet as leaped upon it two hundred years ago.'
'The ancient haunts of the Pilgrims; tongues in trees; books in the running streams; sermons in stones; and good in every thing.'
'The hospitality of our Fathers – the best first, and the best always.'”

This section provides a significant oral history of the New England anniversary celebrations, and importantly introduced a wider British audience to the story of the Pilgrim Fathers. However, it is Hodgson’s footnote to this letter that had the most substantial literary impact. Here he provides a detailed account of Daniel Webster’s anniversary address. Webster is credited with popularising the use of the term ‘Pilgrim Fathers’, and Hodgson’s account of his speech is one of the first uses of the term in a British publication. The emotive account idealizes and celebrates the origin of Plymouth in the seventeenth century:

"Different, indeed, most widely different, from all common instances of emigration and plantation were the conditions, the purposes, and the prospects of our Fathers, when they established their infant colony upon this spot.

[…]

Some natural tears they shed, as they left the pleasant abode of their fathers; and some emotions they suppressed, when the white cliffs of their native country, now seen for the las time, grew dim to their sight.

[…]

Cultivated mind was to act on uncultivated nature; and more than all, a government and a country were to commence, with the very first foundation laid under the divine light of the Christian Religion, Happy auspices of a happy futurity! Who could wish that his country’s existence had otherwise begun?"

There are clear echoes of Felicia Hemans’ 1825 poem ‘The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England’ in Webster’s address. Indeed, Hemans recorded in her notebook the influence Hodgson’s letters had on her poetry. Webster’s oration stresses the uniqueness of the Pilgrims colonial mission ‘widely different, from all common instances of emigration and plantation were the conditions, the purposes, and the prospects of our Fathers’. Hemans’ poetic account stresses a similar point; it is not ‘Bright jewels of the Mine’, ‘the wealth of seas’ or ‘the spoils of war’ that bring the Pilgrim Fathers to New England, but rather ‘The Freedom to worship God’. In this way, the settlement of New England is absolved from some of the morally questionable aspects of settler colonialism and is painted as a fitting origin myth for the United States. Hemans’ poem went on to become widely praised and reprinted America in the nineteenth and twentieth-century, demonstrating the importance of Atlantic exchange in the creation of national myths and narratives.

Brian Richard Howman, An Analysis of Slave Abolitionists in the North-West of England (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 2006), p.74.

Adam Hodgson, Letters from North America Written During a Tour in the United States and Canada, Vol I (London: Hurst, Robson, & Co), p.46.

The first bible published in British North America. It was written by Puritan missionary John Eliot (1604 – 1690) who translated the bible into the indigenous Massachusett language; Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe

Adam Hodgson, Letters from North America Written During a Tour in the United States and Canada, Vol II (London: Hurst, Robson, & Co), p.141.