to the most authentic and respected works. I have indicated my sources in notes, and everyone will be able to verify them. When it was a matter of opinions, of political customs, of observations of mores, I sought to consult the most enlightened men. If something happened to be important or doubtful, I was not content with one witness, but decided only on the basis of the body of testimonies.”62 To an extent, Tocqueville conceded, this had to be taken on trust, because it needed not to be forgotten that “the author who wants to make himself understood is obliged to push each of his ideas to all of their theoretical consequences, and often to the limits of what is false and impractical.”63 Tocqueville therefore, and not without some justification, made a plea for generosity on the part of the reader. “I would like you,” he remarked, “to grant me the favor of reading me with the same spirit that presided over my work, and would like you to judge this book by the general impression that it leaves, as I myself came to a decision, not due to a particular reason but due to a mass of reasons.”64 In his unpublished notes, he added the following remark: “To whoever will do that and then does not agree with me, I am ready to submit. For if I am sure of having sincerely sought the truth, I am far from considering myself as certain to have found it.”65 Tocqueville’s modesty in this and (as we have seen) with regard to other elements of his inquiry on America seems frequently to have been overlooked by his critics.
What of the voyage itself and how did Tocqueville come to understand his journey into America?66 We have to acknowledge, with François
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Furet, that “the genesis of Tocqueville’s visit to America is shrouded in mystery.”67 When and why he decided to undertake this hazardous enterprise is difficult, if not impossible, to gauge. Next, we should begin by remembering that Tocqueville was only one of many French men and women who, throughout the nineteenth century, crossed the Atlantic to witness the New World at first hand. We should then add that his journey was in many ways not dissimilar from that of substantial numbers of his compatriots. Most arrived by way of New York and were immediately overwhelmed by its sense of fervent and perpetual activity. Educated visitors tended to make their way to Boston. Substantial numbers visited Canada and the Great Lakes (and, like Tocqueville, saw and wondered at the startling beauty of Niagara Falls),68 but few ventured to the South, preferring rather to satisfy their curiosity on the Eastern Seaboard. Typically people came for an extended stay, but it was unusual for it to last longer than between three and six months. Rarely did the French come alone—characteristically they came with a friend or member of the family—and even more rarely did they decide not to return home. But for all of them, America began the moment they boarded ship and set sail, most often (as in Tocqueville’s case) from Le Havre.
With the advent of the steam ship, the journey time was reduced to between one and two weeks, and it could be undertaken in relative comfort. In Tocqueville’s day, a journey time of between six and seven weeks was quite normal, and it was not without hazard or hardship.69 As Jacques Portes recounts, travelers used their enforced leisure to read books about the United States, to meet Americans, and to improve their often very poor English.70 Tocqueville was no exception.71 Armed with a copy of Basil Hall’s Travels in North America and Volney’s Tableau du climat et du sol des Etats-Unis d’Amérique, Tocqueville embarked on
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April 2, 1831, and, with the ship’s provisions almost exhausted, landed at Newport, Rhode Island, on May 9. A day later he and Beaumont arrived in New York. A long letter to his mother, written on board ship and dated April 26,72 vividly portrays what reads as an almost existential experience. No sooner was he out of sight of the French coast and laid low by seasickness than Tocqueville began to doubt that he would see dry land again. He quickly came to see his world as “a kind of narrow circle upon which play heavy clouds.” To this he added that “the solitude of the ocean is a very remarkable thing to experience.” His vessel came to take on the form of a separate universe, with its own rituals and codes of behavior. Noah’s ark, he told his mother, did not contain a greater variety of animals. Although tightly confined, everyone acted as if they were completely alone and enjoyed a level of freedom unknown elsewhere. “Everyone,” he wrote, “drinks, laughs, eats or cries as the fancy takes him.” Privacy was almost nonexistent, leading Tocqueville to conclude that they were living in the public space like the ancients. Weather permitting, he and Beaumont tried to work as normal. After dinner they spoke English to “all those prepared to listen.” Their first sense of coming within reach of America came when an injured, sky-blue bird became trapped in the ship’s rigging. You could not imagine, he told his mother, the joy caused by such a small animal, which “seemed to have been sent with the express intent of announcing the approach of land.” Later came more birds and fish and, finally, marine vegetation. Then came the first sighting of land and the “delicious spectacle” of grass and trees. Soon after they dropped anchor and went ashore. Never, he wrote, had people been so happy: “[W]e leapt onto land and each of us took a dozen unsteady steps before coming to stand solidly on our feet.” Tocqueville had arrived, and the journey into America had begun.
It is at this point that Tocqueville’s journey can be read as a travelogue, his letters bristling with detail, his mood never less than one of fascination. A new world passed before him, he told one of his sisters-in-law, as if it were seen through a magic lantern.73 The houses along the coast were small and clean, like “chicken coops.” The coastline
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was low and lacking in beauty. No description was adequate to portray the “immense” steamship that conveyed them over sixty leagues in only eighteen hours. New York was greeted with “cries of admiration.” Its external aspect was “bizarre and not very agreeable.” It was possible to call on a lady at nine in the morning without impropriety. No wine was drunk at meals, although American eating habits left much to be desired, with Americans consuming copious amounts in conditions of “complete barbarism.” Americans smoked, chewed tobacco, and spat in public. Generally speaking, they lacked grace and elegance; but this did not mean that they were not a “quite remarkable race of men.”74 The navigation of rivers and canals meant that distance was regarded with “unbelievable contempt.” The speed at which journeys were completed never ceased to astound him, especially when his steamship unexpectedly raced past West Point on its way to Albany. To his brother Édouard, he reported that he was now living in “another world,” where political passions were superficial and the desire to acquire wealth prevailed. Moreover, there were a thousand ways of doing this without troubling the state.75 The cost of living was less than in Paris, although the price of manufactured goods (Tocqueville was especially concerned about the price of much-needed gloves) was exorbitant. Nothing was more delicious than the spectacle offered by the banks of the Hudson, disappearing as the river did in the high, blue mountains to the north, nor anything as sublime as the “perfect calm” and “complete tranquillity” of the wilderness around the Oneida Lake.76 Autumn, with its great variety of colors and its “pure and sparkling sky,” was “the moment when America appeared in all her glory.”77 Even the flies that lit up the nighttime sky were a source of fascination. Nothing, however, had quite prepared him for the extraordinary Shaker ceremony he witnessed in the woods not far from Albany or for the Fourth of July celebrations the day after, all carried out in “perfect order.”78 Nor could he but be
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moved by the lamentable and mournful sight of the Choctaw Indians being transported from their homeland to probable oblivion.
Above all, it was the sheer newness and novelty of America that came increasingly to press itself upon him. Writing to his mother from Louisville in December 1831,79 Tocqueville recorded his impressions of the society he was seeing emerging in the new cities of the Midwest. The Europeans who had first arrived in America, he wrote, had built a society that was analogous to that of Europe but which “at bottom” was radically different. Since then, a new “swarm” of immigrants had poured westward, creating in the valleys of the Mississippi “a new society which bore no comparison with
