Democracy in America

Democracy in America (1835–1840). Alexis de Tocqueville's two‐volume Democracy in America has endured as a classic study of American society and institutions. While nineteenth‐century intellectuals read Tocqueville hoping his insight into American life would supplement their debates over the democratic and nationalistic revolutions sweeping Europe, the work's searching analysis of the social impact of democratic institutions underlies its continuing influence. From the Cold War Era, when Americans sought reassurance about their political system, to the radical 1960s, when many citizens' confidence in democracy faltered, to the multiculturalist debates of the late twentieth century, Tocqueville has offered Americans illuminating criticisms of and theories about their society.

Although born to an aristocratic Parisian family, Tocqueville (1805–1859) embraced the French Enlightenment. As a judicial official, he cultivated a keen interest in liberal institutions. Securing a commission in 1831 to study American prisons with another young nobleman, Gustave de Beaumont, he set out for a nine‐month tour of the United States. Tocqueville interviewed prison officials, Supreme Court justices, businessmen, farmers, and Whig party leaders. Returning to France, he and Beaumont published their study of American prisons, leaving Tocqueville free to compose Democracy in America.

America, Tocqueville argued, offered Europeans an opportunity to learn how the excesses of majority rule might be tempered. Expecting to find that popular passions had run amok without an aristocracy, the Frenchman instead discovered the stabilizing effects of American law, religion, and the family. While he addressed topics ranging from race relations to women's roles in society, Tocqueville's underlying theme remained the balance between equality and liberty. He feared that Americans would both abuse and erode their individualism—a term he coined to describe Americans' independence and self‐reliance. But in the voluntary associations he found throughout the United States, Tocqueville saw hope that America would endure.
See also Antebellum Era; Early Republic, Era of the; Prisons and Penitentiaries; Voluntarism.

Bibliography

George Wilson Pierson , Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, 1938.
Abraham S. Eisenstadt, ed., Reconsidering Tocqueville's Democracy in America, 1988.

Eric D. Daniels