they were not the subject of commentary from either Tocqueville’s friends or family. There were few drafts, and there are no great differences between the manuscript and the published version.90 Tocqueville himself also recognized their distinctiveness within the book as a whole. Issues relating to the future and permanence of the Republic, he commented, “touch on my subject, but do not enter into it; they are American without being democratic, and above all I wanted to portray democracy. So I had to put them aside at first: but I must return to them as I finish.”91 In short, given that there was no clear or obvious parallel between the situation of the slave and Indian populations and conditions then pertaining in Europe, there were no conclusions to be drawn for France. These were specifically American issues and had to be addressed as such.
There can be no doubt that Tocqueville was deeply moved by the plight of the Native Americans. Denying that the picture he had drawn was “exaggerating,” he added, referring to the incident so vividly recalled in a letter to his mother: “I have gazed upon evils that would be impossible for me to recount.”92 But these evils, he believed, were irredeemable, as it seemed inevitable that the “Indian race of North America is condemned to perish.”93 Whether they continued to wander
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through the wilderness or decided to settle made no difference to their prospects. The relentless and prodigious advance of the European settler population condemned them to destruction and extinction. If the individual states sought their complete expulsion, the Union, exuding the spirit of philanthropy and respect for the law, made it possible.
If then the Native American was fated to live on only in our memories, the same could not be said of the slave population of the South. Here was “the most formidable of all the evils that threaten the future of the United States.”94 Again, Tocqueville’s description of their situation and his deep sense of foreboding about the future were structured around his own experience of traveling down the Ohio River to the mouth of the Mississippi. He also drew upon the numerous conversations he had had on the subject while in America. From this he could see how slavery penetrated into the souls of the masters and, therefore, how to the tyranny of laws had to be appended the intolerance of mores. The acute dilemmas and difficulties of this situation did not escape Tocqueville. Slavery neither could nor should endure. It defied economic reason. It denoted a reversal of the order of nature. It was attacked as unjust by Christianity. But, as a deleted passage from the original manuscript reveals, it also told us something profound about American society. “The Americans,” we read in the Nolla edition,
are, of all modern peoples, those who have pushed equality and inequality furthest among men. They have combined universal suffrage with servitude. They seem to have wanted to prove in this way the advantages of equality by opposite arguments. It is claimed that the Americans, by establishing universal suffrage and the dogma of sovereignty have made clear to the world the advantages of equality. As for me, I think that they have above all proved this by establishing servitude, and I find that they establish the advantages of equality much less by democracy than by slavery.95
The prospects of a resolution to this terrible question, in Tocqueville’s view, were slim indeed. Either the Negroes in the South
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would seize their own freedom (by violent means if necessary) or, if freedom were granted to them, they would undoubtedly abuse it. This, in turn, raised the question of the future viability of the Union itself. In his lengthy meditation on this subject, we see clearly the extent to which Tocqueville had taken note of the key political questions agitating America at the time of his stay. He commented, at some considerable length, not only upon the character of President Andrew Jackson but also upon the intense debates over the renewal of the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, tariff reform, and the nullification crisis engineered by Calhoun and his supporters in South Carolina. Jackson, he concluded, was “a slave of the majority” who “tramples underfoot his personal enemies … with an ease that no President has found.”96
Yet, as ever, Tocqueville’s preoccupation was not with the fleeting questions of today but with the future. His focus remained upon the long-term trends that would decide and determine the course of American history. He saw the threats to the Union that came from the slave-owning interests of the South but believed (incorrectly, as it turned out) that all Americans recognized the commercial and political incentives to remain united. Americans, “from Maine to Florida, from the Missouri to the Atlantic Ocean,” agreed about the general principles which should govern society and about the sources of moral authority. The greatest threat to the Union, therefore, came from expansion and what Tocqueville termed “the continual displacement of forces that take place within it.”97 The rapidity and extent of this internal movement, driven forward by the search for material prosperity, only accentuated the danger. Countering these tendencies toward dissolution, however, were the forces of greater economic integration—the civilization of the North, Tocqueville contended, would become the norm—and the Constitution itself. The principles of the Republic had deep roots in American society, and he believed therefore that it could only be with extreme difficulty that the principles of monarchy and aristocracy could be received into American customs. Again
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misjudging the situation, he believed that federal power was weakening rather than strengthening, and thus that talk of presidential despotism was unfounded. His position, then, was one of relative optimism.
It was at the very end of these reflections that Tocqueville provided a glimpse of what he clearly perceived as the forces likely to transform America in the decades to come. He first turned his attention to the causes of America’s commercial greatness. And here he captured something of the all-conquering spirit of American capitalism. “I cannot better express my thoughts,” Tocqueville wrote, “than by saying that Americans put a kind of heroism in their way of doing commerce.”98 They constantly adapted their labors to satisfy their needs and were never hampered by old methods and old attitudes. They lived in “a land of wonders” where everything was in motion and where change was seen as a step forward. Newness was associated with improvement. Americans lived in a “sort of feverish agitation,” keeping them above “the common level of humanity.” “For an American,” Tocqueville wrote, “all of life happens like a game of chance, a time of revolution, a day of battle.”99
In consequence, America was destined to become a major maritime power. It would, as a matter of course, gain dominance over South America. Inescapably, commercial greatness would soon generate military power. Moreover, America would drag the whole North American continent into its orbit. He saw that the United States would soon break its treaty obligations with Mexico. Its people would “penetrate these uninhabited areas,” intent on snatching ownership of the land from its rightful owners. Texas, although still under Mexican rule, was day by day being infiltrated by Americans, imposing their language and way of life. The same was happening wherever the “Anglo-Americans” came into contact with other peoples. “So it must not be believed,” Tocqueville concluded, “that it is possible to stop the expansion of the English race of the New World,” for such was its “destiny.”100
Moreover, the mistake has been to imagine that Tocqueville, having completed the second volume of Democracy in America, turned his
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back for good upon the country that had so contributed to his fame and renown. This fits in well with the opinion that derides the value and significance of his journey to America. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only did Tocqueville keep in touch with many of those he had met on his travels across the North American continent, but, time upon time, he referred to America in his published writings and parliamentary speeches, always reminding his readers and listeners of what there was to learn from the American experience. More intriguing still, as time passed by, Tocqueville focused his attention ever more upon the issues he
