Writing in 1876, Anthony Trollope made a sharp distinction between the ordinary citizens of America and their leaders. Four decades earlier, his mother had found all Americans laughable; Frances Trollope's Domestic Manners of the Americans was a descriptive act of revenge that salved the wounds of Britons who had lost two American wars, and the book was a bestseller precisely because it showed every American to be an unmannered, tobacco-chewing, peanut-crunching oaf. In his autobiography, however, Anthony Trollope found the average citizen a paragon of democratic principles. In his reflections on his own experience of our national life, he cites the Americans' generosity, their philanthropy, their love of education and hatred of ignorance. He admires their independence and their willingness to shoulder the responsibilities that go along with freedom. But then, says Trollope, the English visitor becomes cognizant of Americans' official doings, of their politics, and "there at the top of everything," says Trollope, the visitor from abroad "finds the very men who are the least fit to occupy high places."