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Tocqueville in America
In his magisterial Tocqueville in America , George Wilson Pierson reconstructs from diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts the Frenchman's nine-month tour and his evolving analysis of American society. Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1835) has become a touchstone for almost any discussion of the American polity. Taking as its topic the promise and shortcomings of the democratic form of government, Tocqueville's great work is at or near the root of such political truths as the litigiousness of American society, the danger of the "tyranny of the majority," the American belief in a small government that intrudes only minimally into the daily lives of the citizenry, and Americans' love of political debate. Democracy in America is the work of a 29-year-old nobleman who, with his friend Gustave de Beaumont, traveled the breadth of Jacksonian America to inquire into the future of French society as revolutionary upheaval gave way to a representative government similar to America's. In his magisterial Tocqueville in America , George Wilson Pierson reconstructs from diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts the two Frenchmen's nine-month tour and their evolving analysis of American society. We see Tocqueville near Detroit, noting the scattered settlement patterns of the frontier and the affinity of Americans for solitude; in Boston, witnessing the jury system at work; in Philadelphia, observing the suffocating moral regimen at the new Eastern State Prison (which still stands); and in New Orleans, disturbed by the racial caste system and the lassitude of the French-speaking population.
880 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1938
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 18, 2012
This is a brilliantly researched book, filled with previously little known facts, and written in an engaging manner, which sweeps you directly into the amazing life of Tocqueville and his companions. His original intent to merely study the American penal system was quickly diverted into an obsession with all things American. The array of persons he dined with alone competes with where George Washington slept. This is a truly great book.
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April 28, 2025Tocqueville in America by George Wilson Pierson, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1938, was a book I must have come across in anticipation of finally reading Tocqueville’s sociological and philosophical examination of in Jacksonian America of what he called Democracy. During the reading of Pierson’s examination of the trip by a duet of aristocratic French officials and emissaries touring the United States in 1831-32, I read two principal books written by Alexis de Tocqueville’s (1805-1859) travel companion Gustave de Beaumont (1802-1866). I have reviewed Beaumont’s books, a slave novel packed with much essay material about the United States, and a textual examination of the centuries of British misrule in Ireland, addended shortly before Beaumont’s death.
The aristocratic background of the two men, and the episodic revolutionary nature of 19th Century France, and philosophy, and emerging political science/ sociology ideas of the era and a favorable impression of Great Britain (and its gradual egalitarianism)—de Tocqueville married a British woman—formed a foundation before the travel in the United States and the writing both men would do after. They would also try to incorporate the multiple impressions and preconceptions during their somewhat disappointing political activity in France during their lifetime. A word about “Democritie” in America. Tocqueville thought that the United States was a laboratory of self-government, but more importantly, a phenomenon of leveling-up that he perceived was occurring there and, eventually, in Europe. So “Equalitie,”” Equality” would have been a more precise title for Tocqueville’s future volumes on the United States.
As I have stated in the past, the United States was burdened by original sins. The displacement from their land, of the indigenous peoples, for the benefit of the European-American colonists and settlers and the use of African slaves to build that developing nation to that point, when in 1831-32, they encountered Jacksonian America, in person. Not twenty years after the War od 1812, the consequences of the fatal alignment of Native Americans with the British in the Old Northwest of the Michigan Territory and in the Mississippi and Alabama Territory, one seen during the travels of the two men in Michigan, witnessing the deprived spirit and desperation of what still existed in the wilderness of Michigan of the American Indians there, and they were also to witness elements of the “Trail of Tears”, the removal of other tribal peoples across the frozen Mississippi River, near Memphis.
And, while the duet, ostensibly touring America for a study of prisons, were in the South, experiencing bad weather, boating delays, and having about the human waste of slavery for both the slave and the enslaver—underdevelopment in the southern states—they also encountered Sam Houston and Davy Crockett on their way to future fates in Texas and the Mexican-American War. Yet, the Louisiana Purchase and the claim founded upon Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific Northwest coast, yet, in dispute with Great Britain, were to not be traveled by the French aristocrats.
But what they encountered east of the river was sufficient to formulate the great ideas – and not so great ideas—of Tocqueville and of Beaumont. What they gathered about prisons faced mixed results in France, and some evolution from the original examined date, in the United States. They also saw two remnants of France’s remaining imprint upon the Continent, Quebec, where they became immediately homesick and admiring of the rural culture (of an idyllic French past, perhaps), and in New Orleans, where a combination of, perhaps French accommodation with free love, and an aspect of slavery and the rapacious nature of European Americans, giving rise to a “Mulatto” multi-racial cultural predominance which the Frenchmen did not admire.
But, most important to this volume, for students of expeditions, rather that of Lewis and Clark, or of Tocqueville and Beaumont, many notes are lost, later, possibly reinterpreted wrongly, and many impressions, not making real impressions about geography, people, and places—a hectic 11-month journey, indeed. George Wilson Pierson, stands on another scholar, who discovered the Tocqueville manuscripts, Paul Lambert White (1890-1922).
Contents: “A Celebrated Book; Part I (Behind the Journey of a Prophet: The Education of an Aristocrat; the Decision to Visit America—and a Good Excuse; Preparations for Escape); Part II (Knickerbocker America: Havre to New York—38 Days; Reception in New York; First Impressions of the Americans; Society and the City Authorities; Sing Sing—The Prison; Sing-Sing—Reflections on American Society; Finding a Philosophy—and Losing It; June in New York; Taking Stock of Impressions); Part III (New York to Buffalo: To Albany by Sloop and Steam; A State Without a Government? ; Where Once the Iroquois…; The Exile of the Lake Oneida; Auburn—Where Humanity Meant the Whip; Encounter With a Governor, a Squirrel, and a Jurist); Part IV (Great Lakes and Canada: Fortnight in the Wilderness; Fortnight in the Wilderness, continued; On the Upper Lakes; Thunder in the Waters; Lower Canada: A Lost Empire?); Part V (New England: The Heart of the Experience: To Stockbridge, Boston, and Bad News; The Children of Boston—and the Poles; The Aristocrats Unbend; Boston, continued, Social Observations and lesson on the Jury; With the Leaders of church and State; Sparks—and Local self-Government; Mr. Adams and Dr. Channing; Two Massachusetts Prisons; Seen (and Not seen) in Connecticut; Connecticut Afterthought) Part VI (Philadelphia and Baltimore: The Heavenly Prison of the Philanthropists; Sounding the Philadelphia Mind; Baltimore; Beaumont’s ‘Marie’; Philadelphia Again); Part VII (Ohio and Mississippi: Journey to the Ohio: The Hazards of Stage and Steam; Cincinnati; Ohio—or Reflections on the Manufacture of AN American State; Winter Road to Memphis; Tennessee Reflections; Encounter With Choctaw Indians—and an Accident; Two Famous Books—and an Exile Named Houston); Part VIII (New Orleans to Washington: ’24 Heures a la Nouvelle Orleans’; from Mobile to the Chesapeake; Mr. Poinsett Explains; ‘What Makes a Republic Bearable’; Washington Receives the Commissioners; Federal Studies and the Return); Part IX (The Interpretation of an Experience: 1832-1840: Through Disgrace and Disillusion; The Prison Report and a Prison Crusade; The Materials for Tocqueville’s Book; The Design of the Democratie; Tocqueville’s Work in Retrospect: Its Defects; Tocqueville’s Work in retrospect: Its Enduring Qualities); Appendix (Acknowledgements; Tocqueville’s and Beaumont’s American Acquaintances; Table of Abbreviations; Chapter Notes; Bibliography; Index).
“There had been the incident of the three races, for instance, almost at the beginning of their journey: ‘Near Montgomery in the State of Alabama I witnessed a little scene that made me reflect,’ Tocqueville artlessly contradicted himself; ‘near the house of a planter was a charming little white girl (his daughter) whom a young Indian girl was holding in her arms and showering with the most maternal caresses. By her side was a negress amusing the child. The latter, in its slightest gestures, showed a consciousness of the superiority which, according to its youthful experience, already raised it above the two companions, whose caresses and attentions it received with a sort of feudal condescension. Squatting before it, and spying out its slightest movements, the negress seemed curiously divided between the attachment, and the respectful fear, that her young mistress inspired. While even in the effusion and tenderness of the Indian girl there was visible something free, something a little savage, contrasting strangely with the submissive posture and humble gestures of her companion. Something I couldn’t see having attracted her attention in the woods, she got up brusquely, pushed the child aside with some roughness, and plunged into the foliage.’ It would not be wide of the mark to imagine the observer of the scene suddenly plunged into thought…”
I am sure this book enriched my reading of Beaumont and will be invaluable when I get to Tocqueville’s enduring classic about the soul of American economy and polity in Jacksonian America, and what its future might be from 1835.
The aristocratic background of the two men, and the episodic revolutionary nature of 19th Century France, and philosophy, and emerging political science/ sociology ideas of the era and a favorable impression of Great Britain (and its gradual egalitarianism)—de Tocqueville married a British woman—formed a foundation before the travel in the United States and the writing both men would do after. They would also try to incorporate the multiple impressions and preconceptions during their somewhat disappointing political activity in France during their lifetime. A word about “Democritie” in America. Tocqueville thought that the United States was a laboratory of self-government, but more importantly, a phenomenon of leveling-up that he perceived was occurring there and, eventually, in Europe. So “Equalitie,”” Equality” would have been a more precise title for Tocqueville’s future volumes on the United States.
As I have stated in the past, the United States was burdened by original sins. The displacement from their land, of the indigenous peoples, for the benefit of the European-American colonists and settlers and the use of African slaves to build that developing nation to that point, when in 1831-32, they encountered Jacksonian America, in person. Not twenty years after the War od 1812, the consequences of the fatal alignment of Native Americans with the British in the Old Northwest of the Michigan Territory and in the Mississippi and Alabama Territory, one seen during the travels of the two men in Michigan, witnessing the deprived spirit and desperation of what still existed in the wilderness of Michigan of the American Indians there, and they were also to witness elements of the “Trail of Tears”, the removal of other tribal peoples across the frozen Mississippi River, near Memphis.
And, while the duet, ostensibly touring America for a study of prisons, were in the South, experiencing bad weather, boating delays, and having about the human waste of slavery for both the slave and the enslaver—underdevelopment in the southern states—they also encountered Sam Houston and Davy Crockett on their way to future fates in Texas and the Mexican-American War. Yet, the Louisiana Purchase and the claim founded upon Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific Northwest coast, yet, in dispute with Great Britain, were to not be traveled by the French aristocrats.
But what they encountered east of the river was sufficient to formulate the great ideas – and not so great ideas—of Tocqueville and of Beaumont. What they gathered about prisons faced mixed results in France, and some evolution from the original examined date, in the United States. They also saw two remnants of France’s remaining imprint upon the Continent, Quebec, where they became immediately homesick and admiring of the rural culture (of an idyllic French past, perhaps), and in New Orleans, where a combination of, perhaps French accommodation with free love, and an aspect of slavery and the rapacious nature of European Americans, giving rise to a “Mulatto” multi-racial cultural predominance which the Frenchmen did not admire.
But, most important to this volume, for students of expeditions, rather that of Lewis and Clark, or of Tocqueville and Beaumont, many notes are lost, later, possibly reinterpreted wrongly, and many impressions, not making real impressions about geography, people, and places—a hectic 11-month journey, indeed. George Wilson Pierson, stands on another scholar, who discovered the Tocqueville manuscripts, Paul Lambert White (1890-1922).
Contents: “A Celebrated Book; Part I (Behind the Journey of a Prophet: The Education of an Aristocrat; the Decision to Visit America—and a Good Excuse; Preparations for Escape); Part II (Knickerbocker America: Havre to New York—38 Days; Reception in New York; First Impressions of the Americans; Society and the City Authorities; Sing Sing—The Prison; Sing-Sing—Reflections on American Society; Finding a Philosophy—and Losing It; June in New York; Taking Stock of Impressions); Part III (New York to Buffalo: To Albany by Sloop and Steam; A State Without a Government? ; Where Once the Iroquois…; The Exile of the Lake Oneida; Auburn—Where Humanity Meant the Whip; Encounter With a Governor, a Squirrel, and a Jurist); Part IV (Great Lakes and Canada: Fortnight in the Wilderness; Fortnight in the Wilderness, continued; On the Upper Lakes; Thunder in the Waters; Lower Canada: A Lost Empire?); Part V (New England: The Heart of the Experience: To Stockbridge, Boston, and Bad News; The Children of Boston—and the Poles; The Aristocrats Unbend; Boston, continued, Social Observations and lesson on the Jury; With the Leaders of church and State; Sparks—and Local self-Government; Mr. Adams and Dr. Channing; Two Massachusetts Prisons; Seen (and Not seen) in Connecticut; Connecticut Afterthought) Part VI (Philadelphia and Baltimore: The Heavenly Prison of the Philanthropists; Sounding the Philadelphia Mind; Baltimore; Beaumont’s ‘Marie’; Philadelphia Again); Part VII (Ohio and Mississippi: Journey to the Ohio: The Hazards of Stage and Steam; Cincinnati; Ohio—or Reflections on the Manufacture of AN American State; Winter Road to Memphis; Tennessee Reflections; Encounter With Choctaw Indians—and an Accident; Two Famous Books—and an Exile Named Houston); Part VIII (New Orleans to Washington: ’24 Heures a la Nouvelle Orleans’; from Mobile to the Chesapeake; Mr. Poinsett Explains; ‘What Makes a Republic Bearable’; Washington Receives the Commissioners; Federal Studies and the Return); Part IX (The Interpretation of an Experience: 1832-1840: Through Disgrace and Disillusion; The Prison Report and a Prison Crusade; The Materials for Tocqueville’s Book; The Design of the Democratie; Tocqueville’s Work in Retrospect: Its Defects; Tocqueville’s Work in retrospect: Its Enduring Qualities); Appendix (Acknowledgements; Tocqueville’s and Beaumont’s American Acquaintances; Table of Abbreviations; Chapter Notes; Bibliography; Index).
“There had been the incident of the three races, for instance, almost at the beginning of their journey: ‘Near Montgomery in the State of Alabama I witnessed a little scene that made me reflect,’ Tocqueville artlessly contradicted himself; ‘near the house of a planter was a charming little white girl (his daughter) whom a young Indian girl was holding in her arms and showering with the most maternal caresses. By her side was a negress amusing the child. The latter, in its slightest gestures, showed a consciousness of the superiority which, according to its youthful experience, already raised it above the two companions, whose caresses and attentions it received with a sort of feudal condescension. Squatting before it, and spying out its slightest movements, the negress seemed curiously divided between the attachment, and the respectful fear, that her young mistress inspired. While even in the effusion and tenderness of the Indian girl there was visible something free, something a little savage, contrasting strangely with the submissive posture and humble gestures of her companion. Something I couldn’t see having attracted her attention in the woods, she got up brusquely, pushed the child aside with some roughness, and plunged into the foliage.’ It would not be wide of the mark to imagine the observer of the scene suddenly plunged into thought…”
I am sure this book enriched my reading of Beaumont and will be invaluable when I get to Tocqueville’s enduring classic about the soul of American economy and polity in Jacksonian America, and what its future might be from 1835.
August 14, 2012
A modern angle into the interpretation of the foundation of American democracy from a young and fascinated French man. This is really the story of a life long friendship amid the political disruptions of France post-revolution. The book, however, does not delve into the political philosophy of Tocqueville's work, Democracy in America, but instead informs the reader of the events and reflections that brought about that book.
March 11, 2023
Though somewhat dated, this masterly account of the journey of Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustav de Beaumont through America in 1831-32 should be read before, and then perhaps again after, one reads "Democracy in America." Pierson elucidates countless critical details and the reader gains the vivid impression that he is traveling immediately alongside the two young Frenchmen, privy to every step on their journey, every educational moment in their visits, and every conversation in their encounters. Also quite helpful are Pierson's criticisms of Tocqueville's immortal, though flawed work. This is an essential companion-piece for every American seeking to understand our society and political system, even today, and for every scholar seeking to understand Tocqueville's America.
September 13, 2022
Has tons of research, but the author really should have edited it down to the more essential and interesting points. It does drag somewhat.
September 22, 2013
Did not expect much from this book but was pleasantly surprised. Interesting story about Tocqueville's and Beaumont's travels through the US. There observations seem to be intuitively accurate about American. Culture. Tocqueville was a natural sociologist, probably one of the first. He feared education and didn't u dear stand for decentralized govt. amazing the pele that they met, probably all of the famous people of the times of history. An interesting read.. Especially impressed with Beaumont's impressions on then problems caused by slavery and the immorality of the slave caste system.
May 6, 2011
Not an easy read but full of insightful analysis of American culture, society, politics and civilization as observed and interpreted by a French nobleman who traveled through America with a friend in the early 1830's.
April 19, 2007
Interesting book detailing Tocqueville's travels through early U.S. Tocqueville's letters mixed with author's writings.
July 19, 2011
Pierson explains who Tocqueville was and how he came to be the most insightful observer of a young America (1830's).
August 7, 2013
If you love political philosophy and the foundations of representative democracy, then this is one of the best book ever written!
August 11, 2015
Fabulous! A winter reading outloud. First hand accunt of early america.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews