Joel Tyler Headley is best known as the prolific author of histories, especially Napoleon and His Marshals (1846) and Washington and His Generals (1847). Their exceptional popularity with mid-nineteenth-century American readers is generally attributed to the public's appetite for pictures of military valor during the war between Mexico and the United States (1846-1848). While Headley's accounts of his travels in Europe and America have been largely ignored by critics, these books were also best-sellers and played on the same nationalistic sentiments as did his histories. Headley the traveler often gratified the patriotism of his readers by favorably comparing the landscape, people, and institutions of the United States with those of the countries he visited. Thus, Headley's travel writing, like his histories, can be seen as documents of American nationalism.

Headley was born on 30 December 1813 in Walton, Delaware County, New York, into a wealthy family that boasted aristocratic English ancestors. His...