Democracy in America: A New Abridgment for Students

Democracy in America

A New Abridgment for Students

Alexis de Tocqueville

Edited and abridged with an introduction

by John D. Wilsey

LEXHAM PRESS

Democracy in America: A New Abridgment for Students

Copyright 2016 Lexham Press

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

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This book is a revised edition of Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen, 4th ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge: Sever and Francis, 1864).

Print ISBN 9781577997658

Digital ISBN 9781577997665

Lexham Editorial: David Bomar, Brannon Ellis, Rachel Starr Thomson, Joel Wilcox

Cover Design: Eleazar Ruiz

Back Cover Design: Brittany Schrock

To the memory of my grandfather

Jasper Newton Dorsey

Christian, Husband, Father, Grandfather,

Churchman, Servant, Soldier, Citizen

1913–1990

Contents

Introduction

VOLUME I

Author’s Introduction

Chapter I: Exterior Form of North America

Chapter II: Origin of the Anglo-Americans, and Importance of This Origin in Relation to Their Future Condition

Chapter III: Social Condition of the Anglo-Americans

Chapter IV: The Principle of the Sovereignty of the People in America

Chapter V: Necessity of Examining the Condition of the States Before That of the Union at Large

Chapter VI: Judicial Power in the United States, and Its Influence on Political Society

Chapter VII: Political Jurisdiction in the United States

Chapter VIII: The Federal Constitution

Chapter IX: How it Can Be Strictly Said that the People Govern in the United States

Chapter X: Parties in the United States

Chapter XI: Liberty of the Press in the United States

Chapter XII: Political Associations in the United States

Chapter XIII: Government of the Democracy in America

Chapter XIV: What Are the Real Advantages Which American Society Derives from a Democratic Government

Chapter XV: Unlimited Power of the Majority in the United States, and its Consequences

Chapter XVI: Causes Which Mitigate the Tyranny of the Majority in the United States

Chapter XVII: Principal Causes Which Tend to Maintain the Democratic Republic in the United States

Chapter XVIII: The Present and Probable Future Condition of the Three Races Which Inhabit the Territory of the United States

Conclusion

VOLUME II: FIRST BOOK

Influence of Democracy Upon the Action of Intellect in the United States

Chapter I: Philosophical Method of the Americans

Chapter II: Of the Principal Source of Belief Among Democratic Nations

Chapter III: Why the Americans Show More Aptitude and Taste for General Ideas Than Their Forefathers, the English

Chapter IV: Why the Americans Have Never Been So Eager As the French for General Ideas in Political Affairs

Chapter V: How Religion in the United States Avails Itself of Democratic Tendencies

Chapter VI: The Progress of Roman Catholicism in the United States

Chapter VII: What Causes Democratic Nations to Incline Towards Pantheism

Chapter VIII: How Equality Suggests to the Americans the Idea of the Indefinite Perfectibility of Man

Chapter IX: The Example of the Americans Does Not Prove That a Democratic People Can Have No Aptitude and No Taste for Science, Literature, or Art

Chapter X: Why the Americans Are More Addicted To Practical Than To Theoretical Science

Chapter XI: In What Spirit the Americans Cultivate the Arts

Chapter XII: Why the Americans Raise Some Insignificant Monuments, and Others That Are Very Grand

Chapter XIII: Literary Characteristics of Democratic Times

Chapter XIV: The Trade of Literature

Chapter XV: The Study of Greek and Latin Literature Is Peculiarly Useful in Democratic Communities

Chapter XVI: How the American Democracy Has Modified the English Language

Chapter XVII: Of Some Sources of Poetry Amongst Democratic Nations

Chapter XVIII: Why American Writers and Orators Often Use an Inflated Style

Chapter XIX: Some Observations on the Drama amongst Democratic Nations

Chapter XX: Some Characteristics of Historians in Democratic Times

Chapter XXI: Of Parliamentary Eloquence in the United States

VOLUME II: SECOND BOOK

Influence of Democracy on the Feelings of the Americans

Chapter I: Why Democratic Nations Show a More Ardent and Enduring Love of Equality Than of Liberty

Chapter II: Of Individualism in Democratic Countries

Chapter III: Individualism Stronger at the Close of a Democratic Revolution Than at Other Periods

Chapter IV: That the Americans Combat the Effects of Individualism by Free Institutions

Chapter V: Of The Use Which The Americans Make Of Public Associations In Civil Life

Chapter VI: Of the Relation Between Public Associations and the Newspapers

Chapter VII: Relation of Civil to Political Associations

Chapter VIII: How the Americans Combat Individualism by the Principle of Interest Rightly Understood

Chapter IX: That the Americans Apply the Principle of Interest Rightly Understood to Religious Matters

Chapter X: Of the Taste for Physical Well-Being in America

Chapter XI: Peculiar Effects of the Love of Physical Gratifications in Democratic Times

Chapter XII: Why Some Americans Manifest a Sort of Fanatical Spiritualism

Chapter XIII: Why the Americans Are So Restless in the Midst of Their Prosperity

Chapter XIV: How the Taste for Physical Gratifications Is United in America to Love of Freedom and Attention to Public Affairs

Chapter XV: How Religious Belief Sometimes Turns the Thoughts of the Americans to Immaterial Pleasures

Chapter XVI: How Excessive Care for Worldly Welfare May Impair That Welfare

Chapter XVII: How, When Conditions Are Equal and Skepticism is Rife, it is Important to Direct Human Actions to Distant Objects

Chapter XVIII: Why Amongst the Americans All Honest Callings Are Considered Honorable

Chapter XIX: What Causes Almost All Americans to Follow Industrial Callings

Chapter XX: How an Aristocracy May Be Created by Manufactures

VOLUME II: THIRD BOOK

Influence of Democracy on Manners Properly So Called

Chapter I: How Manners Are Softened as Social Conditions Become More Equal

Chapter II: How Democracy Renders the Habitual Intercourse of the Americans Simple and Easy

Chapter III: Why the Americans Show So Little Sensitiveness in Their Own Country, and are So Sensitive in Europe

Chapter IV: Consequences of the Three Preceding Chapters

Chapter V: How Democracy Affects the Relations of Masters and Servants

Chapter VI: How Democratic Institutions and Manners Tend to Raise Rents and Shorten the Terms of Leases

Chapter VII: Influence of Democracy on Wages

Chapter VIII: Influence of Democracy on the Family

Chapter IX: Education of Young Women in the United States

Chapter X: The Young Woman in the Character of a Wife

Chapter XI: How Equality of Condition Contributes to Maintain Good Morals in America

Chapter XII: How the Americans Understand the Equality of the Sexes

Chapter XIII: How the Principle of Equality Naturally Divides the Americans into a Multitude of Small Private Circles

Chapter XIV: Some Reflections on American Manners

Chapter XV: Of the Gravity of the Americans, and Why it Does Not Prevent Them from Often Doing Inconsiderate Things

Chapter XVI: Why the National Vanity of the Americans Is More Restless and Captious Than That of the English

Chapter XVII: How the Aspect of Society in the United States Is at Once Excited and Monotonous

Chapter XVIII: Of Honor in the United States and in Democratic Communities

Chapter XIX: Why So Many Ambitious Men and So Little Lofty Ambition Are To Be Found in the United States

Chapter XX: The Trade of Place-Hunting in Certain Democratic Countries

Chapter XXI: Why Great Revolutions Will Become More Rare

Chapter XXII: Why Democratic Nations Are Naturally Desirous of Peace, and Democratic Armies of War

Chapter XXIII: Which Is the Most Warlike and Most Revolutionary Class in Democratic Armies

Chapter XXIV: Causes Which Render Democratic Armies Weaker Than Other Armies at the Outset of a Campaign, and More Formidable in Protracted Warfare

Chapter XXV: Of Discipline in Democratic Armies

Chapter XXVI: Some Considerations on War in Democratic Communities

VOLUME II: FOURTH BOOK

Influence of Democratic Ideas and Feelings on Political Society

Chapter I: Equality Naturally Gives Men a Taste for Free Institutions

Chapter II: That the Opinions of Democratic Nations about Government Are Naturally Favorable to the Concentration Of Power

Chapter III: That the Sentiments of Democratic Nations Accord with Their Opinions in Leading Them to Concentrate Political Power

Chapter IV: Of Certain Peculiar and Accidental Causes, Which Either Lead a People to Complete the Centralization of Government, or Which Divert Them from It

Chapter V: That amongst the European Nations of Our Time the Sovereign Power Is Increasing, although the Sovereigns Are Less Stable

Chapter VI: What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear

Chapter VII: Continuation of the Preceding Chapters

Chapter VIII: General Survey of the Subject

Subject Index

Introduction

The gradual development of the equality of conditions is therefore a providential fact, and it possesses all the characteristics of a divine decree: it is universal, it is durable, it constantly eludes all human interference, and all events as well as all men contribute to its progress.

Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835

On the night of November 26, 1831, a steamship traveling down the Ohio River on her way to Cincinnati struck a reef in the middle of the river known as Burlington Bar, just upstream from Wheeling, Virginia.¹ The steamship was the Fourth of July, and immediately after striking the obstruction, she began to sink in the freezing water. The river is about a half mile wide at that point, but the sound of the ship striking Burlington Bar could easily be heard on both shores. There were 200 passengers aboard the Fourth of July, but only enough skiffs for about a dozen people. A great tragedy seemed imminent until the ship suddenly stopped sinking—it became hung up on Burlington Bar, which ironically saved the ship after dealing her a fatal blow. After several hours, the steamship William Parsons rescued the stranded passengers of the crippled Fourth of July and no one was lost.²

This might seem a rather obscure, though propitious, event. But there were two important foreign visitors aboard the Fourth of July who likely would have perished had the ship foundered in the middle of the icy river: Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) and Gustave de Beaumont (1802–1866), commissioners from France traveling through America to study prisons. The two travelers survived the accident, completed their mission, and produced an award-winning book on American prisons, titled Du système pénitentiaire aux Étas-Unis et de son application en France. And in addition to fulfilling their mission in America, both authors completed separate projects of their own. Beaumont wrote a novel based on his observations of racial prejudice in antebellum America, titled Marie, or Slavery in the United States (Marie, ou l’esclavage aux Etats-Unis). Tocqueville wrote a study of American political and social institutions and culture, titled Democracy in America (De la Démocratie en Amérique). Tocqueville’s work went on to become one of the most celebrated works in modern political theory and arguably the most articulate and prescient firsthand analysis of American politics and society ever written. If the Fourth of July had succumbed to the frigid waters of the Ohio River in November 1831, subsequent generations including our own likely would have been denied one of the shrewdest and most influential observers of nineteenth-century American polity.

Tocqueville and Beaumont arrived in the United States on May 9, 1831,³ and returned to France on February 20, 1832, spending about nine months traveling throughout Jacksonian America. Tocqueville took copious notes, carried on continuous correspondence, and built numerous relationships with Americans in preparation for writing what became Democracy in America. He completed the first volume of the work in 1835 and the second in 1840.

Tocqueville’s idea to come to America originally was the product of a desire to flee the Revolution of 1830 and the July Monarchy under King Louis-Philippe. He was a young lawyer at the time, and his family was closely associated with Charles X, France’s last king in the Bourbon line. Louis-Philippe, a cousin of Charles seeking to establish a constitutional monarchy, deposed him in 1830. After Louis-Philippe’s rise to power and the establishment of the July Monarchy, all public officials were required to take an oath of loyalty to the new government, which Tocqueville reluctantly—but out of necessity—took.

Taking the oath was something of a no-win situation for Tocqueville. The new government was untried, Tocqueville’s family was opposed to Louis-Philippe, and his own prospects for advancement in France’s legal profession after the revolution were uncertain. Still, Tocqueville was among many in France who were interested in prison reform, and the work undertaken in this area—especially by the Quakers in the American state of Pennsylvania—intrigued Tocqueville. Taking an extended trip to the United States to study prisons on behalf of the French government seemed a plausible way to advance his career and escape the pressure on him at home. Tocqueville and his colleague Beaumont were able to secure their official commissions from the Ministry of the Interior by February 1831, and they departed for America on April 2 aboard the ship Havre for a thirty-eight day trip across the Atlantic.

While prison reform was of interest to the two travelers, it is no secret that Tocqueville’s primary interest was to study the republican example that America presented to the world and, in particular, to France. Prison reform was the pretext—a cynic would call it an excuse—for Tocqueville to leave France for a time to observe firsthand how democracy was unfolding in the young United States. His ultimate goal was to write a book not to celebrate America or even democracy, but to identify lessons derived from the Americans’ experience of democratic revolution for the benefit of his own countrymen. In August 1830, Tocqueville wrote to his old schoolmate, Charles Stoffels, I have long had the greatest desire to visit North America: I shall go see there what a great republic is like; my only fear is lest, during that time, they establish one in France.⁴ And in his introduction to Democracy, Tocqueville sought immediately to dismiss suspicions that he was writing an uncritical work of democratic institutions in America. Rather, he accepted democracy as an objective fact and wanted to address positive and negative lessons the French people could learn from the American example. He wrote, I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress.⁵ Thus, at least two realities are important for modern readers to keep in mind when approaching Tocqueville’s Democracy. First, Tocqueville wrote for a French audience, not an American one. Second, Tocqueville was an aristocrat, and therefore was an outsider to democracy. He believed that democracy would inevitably grow and displace hierarchical social and political structures, but he was not convinced that democracy was an unmitigated good for society. He wanted to acquaint himself with democracy’s assets as well as its liabilities, and to consider ways that Frenchmen might benefit from democracy while avoiding its dangers.

Tocqueville’s first volume opens with what is perhaps the work’s most important chapter—the introduction. Immediately, Tocqueville explains his purpose for the book, which was to analyze the nature of equality of condition as he observed it in America. He writes, I observed that equality of condition, though it has not there [that is, in Europe] reached the extreme limit which it seems to have attained in the United States, is constantly approaching it; and that the democracy which governs the American communities appears to be rapidly rising into power in Europe. Hence I conceived the idea of the book which is now before the reader.⁶ Although equality of condition had taken hold in the United States and seemed to Tocqueville to be destined by Providence to overspread all of human civilization, he thought it was necessary to control the effects of equality. Later in his introduction, he writes, The first of the duties which are at this time imposed upon those who direct our affairs, is to educate the democracy; to renovate, if possible, its religious belief; to purify its morals; to regulate its movements; to substitute by degrees a knowledge of business for its inexperience, and an acquaintance with its true interests for its blind instincts; to adapt its government to time and place, and to make it conform to the occurrences and the men of the times.⁷ Tocqueville’s book, Democracy in America, was both the product of his observations about equality of condition in America and his prescription for how to prevent such equality from degrading into what he called democratic despotism.⁸

Some Tocqueville scholars have noted that Democracy in America is not an easy read.⁹ To the modern American reader, this might well be true. Tocqueville wrote in the style of an early nineteenth-century French aristocrat. But more importantly, Tocqueville’s Democracy is actually two books in one. The first volume is based on Tocqueville’s concrete observations of American democracy. The second volume is more philosophical, focusing on democracy as an idea. Tocqueville finished the second volume almost ten years after returning from America, so his writings there are clearly distinguishable from those of the first volume, which show evidence of fresher impressions. Alan Ryan remarks that the first volume focuses on what everyone would conventionally describe as the features of democratic government.¹⁰ Olivier Zunz and Alan Kahan write of the second volume, that it focused on how the principle of equality affected society and culture.¹¹ Part of the struggle modern readers face results from this difference in style between volumes 1 and 2, but if the reader can appreciate these distinctions beforehand, the difficulties can be mitigated.

Almost immediately after the first volume appeared in print, it was received as a work of genius. Tocqueville’s publisher said, I see you have written a masterpiece.¹² Tocqueville’s mentor, Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard, a member of the French parliament under the July Monarchy, called Democracy the most remarkable political work which has appeared in thirty years. He went on to pay Tocqueville the ultimate compliment for a nineteenth-century French political thinker: Since Montesquieu, there has been nothing like it.¹³ George Wilson Pierson surveyed twenty-three articles reviewing volume 1 of Democracy within a year of its publication, and only one stood out as a negative outlier.¹⁴ One of the most enthusiastic readers of Democracy was John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), the great English political and social theorist. Ryan writes that Mill helped the work to become a success in the English-speaking world.¹⁵

Volume 1 brought Tocqueville immediate fame. In 1835, the year volume 1 was published, he was inducted into the prestigious Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. He celebrated the book’s success by marrying Marie Mottley, and in 1836 the couple took possession of the family estate at Tocqueville in Normandy upon the death of Alexis’ mother. He also entered politics. He ran for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies as the representative of the town of Valognes, which lay adjacent to the Tocqueville estate. His busy personal and professional life explains why volume 2, published in 1840, took a long time to write, and it may explain the more philosophical nature of the work. Volume 2 was not as well received as the first, but the combined work’s success as a groundbreaking and enduring work in political science and sociology speaks for itself.

But why should Americans continue to read Tocqueville’s Democracy in today’s technology-saturated, selfie-obsessed culture, defined by an attention span measured in seconds and a distaste for anything theoretical? The United States is not the same country it was in 1840. Voluntary associations—like churches—do not occupy the central position of influence in American social and political life as they once did. Most citizens of the United States—who are vastly more culturally diverse today—no longer accept the Protestant Christian religion and morality as normative like they did in the early republican period. And the America encountered by Tocqueville was at the threshold of the Industrial Revolution, whereas our own America is grappling with the effects of industrialism and post-industrialism. Furthermore, what Tocqueville observed about the American obsession with the pursuit of wealth pales in comparison with today’s ethos. That is the nature of history, after all; the past is indeed, as L. P. Hartley famously said, a foreign country. Is Democracy now more of a historical artifact from Jacksonian America than a relevant political theory for our own times?

It is both. Democracy represents one consideration of a moment early in the career of the United States. For that reason, Tocqueville’s work is of great interest to historians and laypersons alike, because it is an open window facing the world of Jacksonian America. And Tocqueville was observing early republican society from the perspective of someone who had personally experienced the destruction of liberty in a great revolution in his native France. He offered his nineteenth-century readers, just as he offers his readers of today, wisdom on how to control the Phaethonian chariot of democracy, to keep it from becoming the instrument of tyranny rather than of liberty. Contemporary readers must be cautious about receiving Tocqueville in a historically uncritical manner. We must think historically about Democracy in America.¹⁶ But Tocqueville’s work still speaks to legitimately timeless elements in human beings as political animals, as Aristotle famously said, and for that reason we can continue to learn from him.

Alexis-Charles-Henri Clèrel (Tocqueville’s family name) was born on July 29, 1805, to an ancient Norman aristocratic family. His father, Hervé, was a civil servant for the post-revolutionary, pre-Napoleonic restored Bourbon monarchy. Hervé’s line was not exceedingly wealthy, but it was of the noblesse d’épeé—that is, the family had achieved its noble rank through military service.¹⁷ His mother, Louise-Madeleine Le Peletier de Rosanbo, also was of noble birth. Her family was of the noblesse de robe; they received their title from services rendered in the judicial bureaucracy. Before Alexis was born, the French Revolution nearly destroyed his family during the 1790s. Tocqueville’s maternal great-grandfather, Chrétien Malesherbes (1721–1794), and his daughter were beheaded during the Terror in 1794 for his role as Louis XVI’s defense attorney.¹⁸ Hervé and Louise-Madeleine were imprisoned and marked for execution that same year, but the arrest and beheading of Maximilien Robespierre ended the Reign of Terror and their imprisonment.

Tocqueville grew up fully aware of his social position as a member of the aristocracy. Zunz and Kahan write that Tocqueville never forgot his aristocratic position and always knew himself to be of a class born apart.¹⁹ However, as is clear from Tocqueville’s introduction to volume 1 of Democracy, he knew that the aristocratic hierarchies of feudal Europe were being steadily usurped by egalitarian forces and ultimately would disappear. Tocqueville writes, The gradual development of the principle of equality is, therefore, a Providential fact. It has all the chief characteristics of such a fact: it is universal, it is durable, it constantly eludes all human interference, and all events as well as all men contribute to its progress.²⁰ His belief in the inevitable decline of feudalism was formed in his early education as a teenager, reading the books in his father’s rich library. He was most deeply influenced by Montesquieu, Guizot, Rousseau, and Pascal, to name a few political and moral philosophers whose volumes graced his father’s ample library.

What of Tocqueville’s faith? In his early years, he was a devoted Catholic. He admired Pascal, and was particularly compelled by Pascal’s famous wager theory.²¹ But as a young adult, he became interested in the writings of the philosophes and the Romantics, like Chateaubriand and Rousseau. These thinkers were suspicious, not only of feudal hierarchies but also of the historic teachings of the Roman Catholic faith. Tocqueville ultimately could not resist the philosophes’ rationalist assaults on Catholic dogma, but he continued to believe in the existence of God and in an afterlife with rewards and punishments. Zunz and Kahan asserted that Tocqueville was a deist who continued to look back longingly on the faith he had abandoned as a young man. They write, He deeply regretted [abandoning his faith], for he had a profound desire for religious certainty … but was never able to recapture his boyhood faith as a Catholic.²² Still, his turning away from Roman Catholicism did not compel him to reject the necessity of the public role of religion. Quite the contrary—Tocqueville credited the influence of religion on democracy in America as the most reliable guarantor of liberty.

Tocqueville entered law school in 1824, and by 1827 he had received an appointment as juge auditeur, an apprentice judge, at Versailles. Here is where he met Gustave de Beaumont, his travel companion to America, and his future wife, Marie Mottley. As a lawyer, Tocqueville was competent but not impressive enough to attract the attention of influential people who could help him advance his career. By 1830, after Charles X was overthrown by Louis-Philippe, he had determined to get a commission for a trip to America, which he secured early the next year.

Tocqueville and Beaumont hoped for a successful and eventful tour of the United States. They were not to be disappointed. Zunz and Kahan divide the trip into six phases corresponding to Tocqueville and Beaumont’s travel itinerary:

a)New York to Albany, Utica, Syracuse, and Buffalo;

b)up the Great Lakes to Michigan, and then to Lower Canada (present-day Quebec);

c)New England;

d)Philadelphia and Baltimore;

e)down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati and Kentucky, then south along the Mississippi River to New Orleans; and

f)New Orleans to Charleston, South Carolina, north to Washington, D.C., and finally back to New York.²³

Tocqueville found an America that was experiencing far-reaching changes, but one that still continued to exhibit some pre-revolutionary features. For example, the United States reached all the way to the Pacific by 1831, thanks to the Louisiana Purchase and the joint occupation with Britain of the Oregon Country, but Texas was still part of Mexico (it would secede in 1836 and become a US state in 1845). Many people were feeling the effects of the Industrial Revolution, perhaps most notably with the widespread use of steamships plying major waterways like the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, but the use of rail power was not yet the common mode of transportation that it would become in subsequent decades.

Most of the American population still lived within a few hundred miles of the Atlantic Ocean.²⁴ The frontier, while expanding westward at a rapid rate, remained sparsely populated. Slavery was becoming a major divisive issue in the early to mid 19th century when Tocqueville made his visit. In 1831, two key events occurred that served as major forces advancing the cause of abolition: William Lloyd Garrison published the first issue of The Liberator, and Nat Turner launched his slave rebellion in Virginia. While slavery had not existed in the North for some decades, it was well ensconced in the South and was expanding into the territories according to the pattern laid down in the 1820 Missouri Compromise. Slavery became the primary ‘state’s right’ that sparked the Civil War in the 1860s, but in 1831 it was not yet the threat to the existence of the Union that it would become. The Nullification Crisis (1828–1833) was the most serious threat to the Union at that time, and while slavery was a major issue in that crisis, it was limited to a dispute between South Carolina and the federal government. In 1835, Tocqueville confessed that he had no idea how slavery would develop as an issue in America, but he was sure that the outcome would not be good.

So Tocqueville saw America in this unique state of transition as it was evolving into an industrial economy and society, while just beginning to seriously grapple with the institution of slavery. One of the most striking examples of this shift comes when Tocqueville, having crossed the Ohio River from Ohio into Kentucky, notes the differences between a slave and free economy. Another is Tocqueville’s account of venturing into the wilderness of Michigan to see for himself what the frontier was like. While in New England, Tocqueville received an education on America that was second to none, discussing politics and society with figures such as Alexander Everett (brother of Edward Everett, who shared the dais with Lincoln at the 1863 dedication of Gettysburg National Cemetery), John Quincy Adams (with whom he discussed slavery, in French), Charles Carroll of Maryland (a signer of the Declaration of Independence), Sam Houston (an authority on the Native American tribes of the South, but not yet the heroic president of the Republic of Texas), President Andrew Jackson, and many others. And at the same time Tocqueville and Beaumont were studying American institutions, they were preparing their findings for Système pénitentiaire, the book on prison reform that was the fruit of their official visit to the United States. That book won the Montyon Prize in 1833, two years before Tocqueville completed volume 1 of Democracy. While the award served to help cover the expenses of the American trip, it was Democracy that made Tocqueville’s career both as a writer and as a public figure.

What are some of the salient ideas that Tocqueville developed in Democracy? For our purposes here, we will consider three: first, Tocqueville’s views on the relationship between democracy, equality, and liberty; second, the principle of interest rightly understood; and third, race.

I. Democracy, liberty, equality

In any discussion of ideas, precision in language is crucial. How did Tocqueville understand terms like democracy, equality, despotism, liberty, and manners? We know that Tocqueville was most profoundly struck by what he called equality of condition in America, and that he considered this equality to be the central truth of American civilization. As early as the first page of his introduction, he calls equality of condition the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated.²⁵ Contemporary Americans often use words like democracy, equality, and liberty as if everyone agrees on what they mean, but such terms can be ambiguous. Tocqueville had specific definitions in mind when he used them, and they are often different than the ways we understand and use them in contemporary discourse. If we are going to grasp the significance of Tocqueville’s work, it is important at the outset to understand what he means, so we may think historically and philosophically about Democracy.

First, what does Tocqueville mean by equality of condition? Importantly, he does not have economic or social leveling in mind. When Tocqueville refers to equality of condition, he means that America had no feudal hierarchies with which to contend, like those that had existed in France for over a thousand years and of which he was a part. No American inherited an aristocratic title. Since America had no feudal past and no formal aristocratic privileges, citizens could enjoy liberty to an extent unlike anything that existed in France. It was not the case in America that only the aristocracy could be considered free by virtue of a noble birth. The basis of rights in America was the individual birthright of freedom. The Declaration of Independence expresses this, and the Constitution forbids aristocracy in the Title of Nobility Clause;²⁶ therefore, contrary to the European mindset, the concept of one’s betters did not exist in the minds of Americans like it had existed in feudal Europe since the fall of Rome.

This notion of equality of condition presented itself to Tocqueville most plainly in New England²⁷ as he observed the centrality of the township and the power of local associations. But we should hasten to add that it was also in New England that Tocqueville first considered the great exception of the Southern states to the notion of equality of condition. In a discussion with John Quincy Adams about the contrast between the North and the South, Tocqueville came to understand that a form of aristocracy did indeed exist in the slave economy of the South. In fact, Tocqueville acknowledged that the Southern states could not be considered truly democratic because of slavery. In volume 2, in his chapter on honor, Tocqueville clarifies, I speak here of the Americans inhabiting those states where slavery does not exist; they alone can be said to present a complete picture of democratic society.²⁸ In fact, while Tocqueville did not believe that another revolution was likely in America because of the strength of social equality, he did think it possible for revolution to break out in the South. Race war, Tocqueville says, would be the cause of revolution in the South because of inequality of condition there.²⁹

But despite slavery and its debilitating effects on both white and black Southern society, Tocqueville believed that equality of condition as it was manifested in New England was the norm in America. In New England, equality tended toward liberty as it did nowhere else. Local institutions helped secure liberty, in large part because they were informed by religion. Tocqueville wrote, Townships and town arrangements exist in every State; but in no other part of the Union is a township to be met with precisely similar to those of New England. The farther we go towards the South, the less active does the business of the township or parish become; it has fewer magistrates, duties, and rights; the population exercises a less immediate influence on affairs; town-meetings are less frequent, and the subjects of debate less numerous. The power of the elected magistrate is augmented, and that of the voter diminished, whilst the public spirit of the local communities is less excited and less influential.³⁰ So while equality of condition was the most noteworthy characteristic of American life, it demonstrated itself most purely in New England, and less so in the states of the South. (We will consider Tocqueville’s thoughts on racial prejudice and its future impact on the Union later in this introduction.)

How did Tocqueville understand the meaning of democracy, and what was the relationship between democracy and equality as Tocqueville articulated it? Tocqueville thought of democracy more broadly than we, who in contemporary times often mean government by consent of the people and not much more. For Tocqueville, democracy entailed equality of condition to the extent that democracy and equality were nearly synonymous. A democracy, for Tocqueville, described a polity, society, and economy that were defined by the absence of hereditary hierarchies. Pierson writes that democracy and equality were so synonymous in Tocqueville’s mind as to be difficult for later translators to discern between the two terms. According to Pierson, Henry Reeve, whose English translation of Democracy has been the mainstay since shortly after it was published, suffered from one capital error³¹ in the transliteration of Tocqueville’s title. In French, the work is called De la Démocratie en Amérique (Democracy in America), but Pierson thought Reeve should have rendered the title "Concerning Equality in America."³² Throughout his work, Tocqueville uses the term démocratie polysemantically—that is, he sometimes means equality, while at other times he refers to the progress of equality, and at still other times he uses démocratie to refer to rule by the people. Pierson concludes that this unconscious lack of precision was unfortunate, for it came to cloud much of Tocqueville’s thinking about America and to vitiate for American readers certain parts of his great commentary.³³ Regardless of whether we agree with Pierson about this reality, it is important for modern readers to understand this important feature of Tocqueville’s use of language throughout the work.

A common misconception about Tocqueville’s Democracy is that the work was a celebratory account of American republican institutions—that Tocqueville accepted democracy or equality of condition as an absolute good for society. It is true that Tocqueville accepted the idea that democracy (equality) was an irresistible force, carried along by the will of Providence. But it is not true that Tocqueville believed that this was necessarily a good thing. Americans today conflate democracy and freedom, but Tocqueville was too much of a realist to do so. Tocqueville thought that democracy tends to favor the majority, and majorities tend to concentrate their power in order to preserve and extend it. Thus, the despotism of the majority can prevail easily in a democracy, much more so than in an aristocracy. An aristocracy has a built-in hierarchical structure to ensure against mob rule. Tocqueville writes, To concentrate the whole social force in the hands of the legislative body is the natural tendency of democracies; for as this is the power which emanates the most directly from the people, it has the greater share of the people’s overwhelming power, and it is naturally led to monopolize every species of influence.³⁴ Thus, Tocqueville rejected the notion of vox populi, vox Dei, that popular majorities always protect the liberty of the people.

This notion leads us to ask, what did Tocqueville mean by liberty, and how is liberty best served in a democracy if democracy naturally tends toward the despotism of the majority? For Tocqueville, liberty had both a philosophical and a practical meaning. Philosophically, he borrowed from John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, in thinking of liberty in two ways, natural and civil. Natural liberty referred to license, the doing of whatever one pleases. According to Winthrop, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good.³⁵ Furthermore, it rails against God’s authority, and in Winthrop’s words, "omnes sumus licentiâ deteriores, or, too much freedom makes us all worse.³⁶ But there is another form of liberty, which is civil, or moral, liberty. According to Winthrop, this is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest,³⁷ and it is apprehended through submission to the divine law. Tocqueville describes Winthrop’s formula as a fine definition of liberty.³⁸ And for Tocqueville, the key feature that distinguishes civil (moral) from natural liberty is religion, particularly religion that is not coerced by the state. Tocqueville believed that religion that is unsupported by aught beside its native strength³⁹ is the steadiest protector of liberty and, furthermore, the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law, and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.⁴⁰ Tocqueville was astounded not only at the reality of religious liberty in the United States, but also at the fact that Americans from every walk of life agreed that religion was indispensable to the sustenance of liberty. He writes, I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere faith in their religion—for who can search the human heart?—but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens, or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation, and to every rank of society."⁴¹

Tocqueville also thought of liberty in practical terms. That is, he thought that individual liberties were the manifestation of a prevailing spirit of liberty in the land. Again, New England was Tocqueville’s paradigm. He described the individual New Englander as taking an active role in governing the township’s affairs because there the individual possessed a personal stake in its success. The Connecticut townsman, for example, was not merely a serf working the land on his lord’s manor. He was a member of the town, and membership in the town afforded him duties, rights, and privileges. If the government rose or fell, it did so on the merits or demerits of the individuals making up the township. The notion of the public good was no abstraction to the townsman in New England, but the individuals in community actively and commonly sought out the specific public goods that benefit everyone. Tocqueville describes it in this way:

The native of New England is attached to his township because it is independent and free: his co-operation in its affairs insures his attachment to its interest; the well-being it affords him secures his affection; and its welfare is the aim of his ambition and of his future exertions. He takes a part in every occurrence in the place; he practices the art of government in the small sphere within his reach; he accustoms himself to those forms without which liberty can only advance by revolutions; he imbibes their spirit; he acquires a taste for order, comprehends the balance of powers, and collects clear practical notions on the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights.⁴²

Throughout the book, Tocqueville describes particular liberties, laws, federal relationships, mechanisms, associations, and manners that existed in America that made it a much more legitimate example of a free society than France. Liberty was not understood only in abstract terms. Tocqueville believed that liberty is seen in active terms. The aim of his study was to identify how Americans specifically applied liberty, and how to preserve it under the pressures wrought by the natural tendencies of equality toward despotism.

In order for liberty to survive and thrive then, a local spirit of community was necessary. Tocqueville calls this a public spirit⁴³ when describing the New England township. To nurture this public spirit, members of a local community needed to nurture certain habits, or manners. James T. Schleifer calls these habits positive liberty. Positive liberty supports negative liberty, which Schleifer describes in formal, explicit terms. Negative liberty provides specific rights or freedoms—for example, the right to vote, the liberty to associate, or freedom of the press. So every member of a community may possess the legal right to vote, for example, but without the habit of association, or the habit of education, it would not matter whether the right to vote existed or not. Schleifer writes, "Just as the habits of liberty give life to the art of liberty, positive liberty assures that rights granted are not empty of substance."⁴⁴ Thus, Schleifer touches on one of the most important and unique American characteristics that Tocqueville describes—manners, and their profound influence on political and social culture.

Tocqueville defines manners as the whole moral and intellectual condition of a people.⁴⁵ American manners, rooted as they were in religion, were the source of American greatness. Furthermore, manners made democracy in America possible and were key to preserving liberty. Tocqueville asserts that the gradual growth of democratic manners and institutions should be regarded, not as the best, but as the only means of preserving freedom.⁴⁶ Manners—the moral habits of the citizenry—were more important than laws in society. Indeed, the American laws were based on manners. The laws were meaningless apart from manners, and the centrality and superiority of manners related to the laws is what Schleifer illustrates in his description of the contrast between positive and negative liberty.

Since, as Tocqueville notes, religion informed manners in America, what role did religion play in society as Tocqueville observed it? As we have already seen, for Tocqueville, religion and morality together were indispensable supports of liberty. The great paradox in America was that, while religion had no direct power over the citizenry via establishment, nothing influenced American manners more than the Christian religion. In Tocqueville’s assessment, there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.⁴⁷ Elsewhere, he writes, The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.⁴⁸ Devotion to God and to his laws were so central to the American mind that love of country was considered an expression of devotion to God, as Tocqueville observed. Russell Kirk writes that, in the middle of the nineteenth century, American society might have sunk into an irresponsible disintegrating individualism, had it not still been held together by the cement of Christian teaching.⁴⁹

So, for Tocqueville, liberty is distinct from democracy, or equality. While democracy is inexorably supplanting aristocracy by the apparent working of an all-powerful Providence, this is not to suggest that liberty is also inevitable. Rather, in Tocqueville’s view, the natural tendency of democracy is toward despotism. But despotism is not inevitable either. Tocqueville insisted that liberty was fundamental to human nature, and while some form of determinism may apply in history, human beings were not subject to such a force. People could, by the exercise of their will, defy the natural tendency toward despotism in a democracy, and protect and extend liberty and the public good.

How can despotism prevail in a democracy, and how can the citizenry combat despotism? Kirk says that Tocqueville’s analysis of democratic despotism is his supreme achievement as a political theorist, a sociologist, a liberal, and a conservative.⁵⁰ For Tocqueville, democratic despotism was not like an absolute monarchy or what we might recognize as a dictatorship, in which one person or group locates supreme political power in themselves. Democratic despotism, as Kirk understood Tocqueville, was one that no longer pursued any larger purpose but instead satisfied itself with the ordinary. Kirk writes, Society ought to be designed to encourage the highest moral and intellectual qualities in man; the worst threat of the new democratic system is that mediocrity will not only be encouraged, but may be enforced. Tocqueville dreads the reduction of human society to an insect-like arrangement.… Variety, individuality, progress: these Tocqueville struggled to conserve.⁵¹ In volume 2, in a chapter titled What Sort Of Despotism Democratic Nations Have To Fear, Tocqueville describes democratic despotism as a hyper-individualism, in which people are concerned only about themselves and no longer consider the public good or their responsibility to contribute to it. An immense and tutelary power,⁵² as Tocqueville describes it, would take responsibility for the community, and those members no longer would have a personal stake, or ownership of it. The ever-extending tide of equality of condition has the effect of leveling individuals to this even plane, resulting in self-centeredness and a pursuit of personal desires above all other concerns. Liberty, which is the fount of political responsibility, creativity, expression, innovation, order, and morality, can be devoured by equality, so that little of human dignity remains.

The tool for preventing this sad state of affairs is the local voluntary association. Churches, townships, reform societies, civic organizations—these and other kinds of local associations that are dedicated to promoting the public good, Tocqueville insisted, are the keys to preserving liberty in the face of a threatening democratic despotism. An aristocracy has an ingrained mechanism to ensure against despotism; in the European feudal system, the aristocrats themselves served as a check against executive overreach. Without aristocratic structure, the people can degenerate from a state of liberty to license (natural liberty), but local associations serve to check this descent. And it is local associations, rather than national ones, that make the difference. Tocqueville saw that it was harder for individuals to concern themselves with national affairs because the more distant the issues, the more abstract they become. Because local affairs are of immediate interest, people are more inclined to take responsibility for them. Tocqueville writes, Local freedom, then, which leads a great number of citizens to value the affection of their neighbors and of their kindred, perpetually brings men together, and forces them to help one another, in spite of the propensities which sever them.⁵³ Thus, the concerns of a locality naturally serve to foster community in the form of associations, and this is the best way to check the advance of despotism.

So Tocqueville devoted a great deal of energy to writing about democracy, equality, liberty, and despotism, and the role played by manners, religion, and associations in the American democratic society.

II. Interest rightly understood

The notion Tocqueville called interest rightly understood (l’interêt bien entendu) also played an essential and unique role in American democracy, as yet another guarantor of civil liberty. Tocqueville recognized that Americans were governed not so much by a love of virtue in itself, but more by the practical benefits of virtue, especially when virtue and self-interest were the same. He writes, "In the United States, hardly anybody talks of the beauty of virtue; but they maintain that virtue is useful, and prove it every day. The American moralists do not profess that men ought to sacrifice themselves for their fellow-creatures because it is noble to make such sacrifices; but they boldly aver that such sacrifices are as necessary to him who imposes them upon himself, as to him for whose sake they are made."⁵⁴ When individual self-interest could contribute to the public good, civil liberty was preserved and extended. Thus, at the intersection of public good and private interest, Tocqueville located interest rightly understood. Wilfred M. McClay calls this converging of public and private interest as a halfway covenant, one that conceded the primacy of unregenerate individualistic vice, being satisfied, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s witticism, to coax that vice into paying willing tribute to virtue.⁵⁵

In an important respect, liberty itself is entailed in the notion of interest rightly understood, as Tocqueville observed it in Jacksonian America. The old Federalist Party’s dream of a classical republic led by wise and virtuous democratic aristocracy had been replaced, especially by the late 1820s and early 1830s, by the era of the common man. The disinterestedness that George Washington so scrupulously observed in order to set the example for his successors also was gone—replaced by, in the words of Gordon Wood, a democratic marketplace of equally competing individuals with interests to promote.⁵⁶ How indeed, Tocqueville asks, is it possible for citizens who have been in America only for a generation or two to conjure up sincere patriotism and profound concern for the issues of their nation, beginning with local concerns and expanding outward to national ones? It is because every one in his sphere, takes an active part in the government of society.⁵⁷ Thus, in the practice of interest rightly understood, we can see manners, religion, freedom of association, and civil liberty working together in American society against concentration of power in the hands of majorities and the Byzantine dreariness⁵⁸ (in Kirk’s words) of