Tocqueville's Discovery of America

by Leo Damrosch

Alexis de Tocqueville is more quoted than read; commentators across the political spectrum invoke him as an oracle who defined America and its democracy for all times. But in fact his masterpiece, Democracy in America , was the product of a young man’s open-minded experience of America at a time of rapid change. In Tocqueville’s Discovery of America , the prizewinning biographer Leo Damrosch retraces Tocqueville’s nine-month journey through the young nation in 1831–1832, illuminating how his enduring ideas were born of imaginative interchange with America and Americans, and painting a vivid picture of Jacksonian America.

Damrosch shows that Tocqueville found much to admire in the dynamism of American society and in its egalitarian ideals. But he was offended by the ethos of grasping materialism and was convinced that the institution of slavery was bound to give rise to a tragic civil war.

Drawing on documents and letters that have never before appeared in English, as well as on a wide range of scholarship, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America brings the man, his ideas, and his world to startling life.

Genres: History, American History, Travel, Politics, Nonfiction, Biography, The United States Of America

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Leo Damrosch is an American author and professor. In 2001, he was named the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University.[1] He received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from Cambridge University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University. His areas of academic specialty include Romanticism, the Enlightenment, and Puritanism.[1] Damrosch's "The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus" is one of the most important recent explorations of the early history of the Society of Friends. His Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (2005) was a National Book Award finalist for nonfiction and winner of the 2006 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award for best work of nonfiction. Among his other books are "Symbol and Truth in Blake's Myth" (1980), "God's Plot and Man's Stories: Studies in the Fictional Imagination from Milton to Fielding" (1985), "Fictions of Reality in the Age of Hume and Johnson" (1987), and "Tocqueville's Discovery of America" (2010).

Reviews

[Lars Guthrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful companion to Peter Carey's 'Parrot and Olivier,' Damrosch's work sticks with the real historical figure, while still offering a fresh perspective. 'Discovery' follows Tocqueville through his nine month peregrination using contemporary accounts from the same times, places, and personalities found in his notes, which Damrosch does a beautiful job of translating.

Tocqueville certainly made keen and pithy observations on the new land he was visiting, some of which have proved their truth over many years. He was far less judgmental than other European tourists of the period, like Charles Dickens and Francis Trollope (Anthony's mother), who saw 'a nation of spitters.'

But Damrosch reminds us Tocqueville was also a very real young man, who could be insecure, depressed, compulsive, and frustrated with the sexual mores of American women. And that he was sometimes wrong, as when he portrayed a vast and homogenous middle class without economic divisions, or when he failed to see the cagey intelligence behind Andrew Jackson's corn-pone personality.

Tocqueville's journey (with his friend Gustave de Beaumont) itself makes for a good story--something Peter Carey picked up on. The two men were indefatigable travelers, tramping through endless forest and bouncing over relentlessly rough roads, bearing up under illness, mosquitos, and a freakishly cold Southern winter, meeting luminaries and common folk. They were up for an adventure, and they had one.

Damrosch presents their story in a slender and immensely readable volume that makes excellent use of primary sources, acknowledges modern perspectives, and even concisely assesses both the myth and the matter of Tocqueville's masterpiece, 'Democracy in America.'

[John David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since its publication nearly two centuries ago, the observations taken down in “Democracy in America” have reached the status of secular scripture. Nearly every political scientist or nineteenth-century Americanist will tell you it’s nearly impossible to understand the United States without having read Tocqueville. It presents a set of concepts, language, rules, and categories by which Tocqueville organized his thoughts, and through which Americans still largely interpret their own history.

Leo Damrosch, recently retired from Harvard University as a literature professor and author of several biographies of eighteenth-century figures such as Swift, Rousseau, and Blake, here offers up a book that considers as Tocqueville as a traveler. He is not, for the most part, so much interested in Tocqueville’s ideas as he is with the nine-month journey that he took in 1831 with his friend Gustave de Beaumont. Damrosch highlights Tocqueville’s cunning observations on the American mise-en-scene, but much of the book reads like a place setting to describe the Jacksonian America that Tocqueville and Beaumont visited. Damrosch also does his due diligence in emphasizing his relationship with Beaumont, who sometimes get shoved to the side, frequently quoting from their correspondence and diary entries.

The first chapters retrace their trip from May, 1831 to February, 1832, detailing people, books, ideas, and experiences that influenced the pair: the (sexually conservative, according to Tocqueville) women, enslaved men and free men, rich and poor. Their initial task of making careful observations of the American penal system quickly became less important than charting nearly every aspect of American life one could imagine, from the differences between cities to the educational status of the average citizen, economics, American forms of religion, and ultimately the “race problem” that Tocqueville noticed a generation before the outbreak of the Civil War would only be resolved in bloodshed. Instead of the class prejudice he was used to back in the Old World, Americans had a racial caste system, which struck him as just as odd as the French armies of government bureaucrats and economic caste system would have struck any American.

At a brisk 225 pages, Damrosch isn’t offering up here anything like George Wilson Pierson’s 1938 exhaustive, almost day-to-day reportage of the journey. It’s very much a broad, personality-focused, narrative-driven history where ideas take a backseat; there is little to no wrestling with Tocqueville’s conclusions about American life or any “big takeaways.” While sometimes barely scratching below the superficial, Damrosch’s book remains a valuable one for those who want a quick, jaunty account of Tocqueville’s and Beaumont’s travels without committing to the time and effort required for Pierson’s more encyclopedic 900-page detailed accounting.

Nota bene: Damrosch relies heavily on the four-volume bilingual edition of “Democracy in America” put out by (who else?) the wonderful Liberty Fund. The four-volume, 3,360-page “historical-critical” version can be had for $60, while the two-volume English-only version will set you back a mere $22 (and that’s before their very frequent and generous discount coupons).

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damrosch does an excellent job of tracing Tocqueville and his companion's trip across America and their changing thoughts and feelings about the country. Damrosch refers to Tocqueville's book as "prescient" and that is exactly how I felt years ago reading it for a class. Perhaps only an outsider could have been so spot-on about the effects of democracy on a culture. If you read it for yourself, you will probably think, as I did, "could he really have been writing in the early 19th-century?" Because it shows remarkable insight (and foresight). "In proportion as slavery departs, the whites grow more afraid of mixing the races and grow more contemptuous. The law is less harsh, but hatred is more so." He is anticipating here the work of 20th century anthropologists like Victor Turner and Mary Douglas. Freed African-Americans were thrust into a social limbo--a liminal state as Turner called it--they were hated and feared for no longer being in a fixed, controllable category. Tocqueville, in many ways, was a social anthropologist before the discipline existed and his book shows many such insights.

[Mike W · Rating 3 out of 5]

Domrosch's book is a pleasant and easy read. It offers the reader a vivid portrait of the journey through the US taken by Tocqueville and his companion that made his classic work "Democracy in America" possible. Through the narrative, the Damrosch gives the reader a sense of what life was like in the US in the 1830's.

Unfortunately, the book fails to summarize or analyze Tocqueville's political views well. It provides glimpses here and there, but never really synthesizes the great man's views in a coherent way. Moreover, Damrosch annoyingly over-emphasizes what he considers Tocqueville's errors. Indeed, a reader who read this before reading "Democracy in America" would wonder how such a bumbling political analyst could have become so famous.

But there are interesting tidbits in the story--about Charles Dickens' bigotry and about JQ Adams' disdain for Andrew Jackson, for example.

So Damrosch's book is enjoyable and worth reading, but could have been much better.

[Jeremy K · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this was a book that did not need to be written. The sort of information contained in the book - where Tocqueville and Beaumont went, who they met, what America was like at the time, a brief synopsis of Tocqueville's life - are appropriate for an introduction to Democracy in America, but not for an entire book.

If the book were interesting in some way, then I might have enjoyed it more. But instead, it reads like one long encyclopedia entry on Alexis de Tocqueville. The only interesting parts were when the author quoted from Democracy in America. One good thing I got out of this is that I'll read Tocqueville's classic. But as for this book, I didn't care for it.

[Lona Manning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suppose you are like me, somebody who knows who Alexis de Tocqueville was, and had read quotes from his Democracy in AmericaDemocracy in America and always meant to read it, but never had. Just pick up this book instead and you'll get an overview of Democracy in America combined with travelogue combined with a biography of Tocqueville, who was only 25 when he toured the infant democracy and made his prescient observations.
I knew I could trust Leo Damrosch to be my guide, because I read and thoroughly enjoyed his joint biography of Samuel Johnson and his circle, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an AgeThe Club. Of added interest to me is the fact that my own maternal ancestors were pioneers in the regions that Tocqueville visited.

[Dave Franklin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leo Damrosch's "Tocqueville's Discovery of America" is both a travel journal through the American past and a look at the American polity from the perspective of a 19th Century French aristocrat. Much of what Tocqueville discovered resonates today. How can the reader not find Tocqueville prescient in his warning that: " In America the majority erects a formidable barrier around thought...In democratic republics, tyranny leaves the body alone and goes straight for the soul. " A particularly poignant admonition in light of the virtue signaling and posturing that substitutes for thought today.

Along the way, Damrosch introduces us to a number of interesting characters from our past: Basil Hall, Thomas Hamilton, Jared Sparks, and Joel Poinsett among others. Moreover, numerous illustrations accompany the text and enliven the narrative.

Well-worth reading.

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a pleasant slim book written in a popular style about Tocqueville's travels across America that produced his massive massive tome deconstructing, sometimes ridiculously inaccurately, sometimes fairly closely, and even other times prophetically, the society and polity of the new nation. While being breezy, the author gives insights into the diplomat's conditionings that may have led him to arrive at the conclusions that he did. He paints the world that we need to understand to make sense of Tocqueville's book. To do so, he also quotes from the man's unpublished material. As always, personal accounts to us contemporaries are supremely hilarious and fascinating. The most absurd moment however was Tocqueville's remark that Americans exclusively public transport as against Europeans. He's a gripping man for his helplessness and self-aware schizophrenia.

[Serge · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an invaluable companion to Democracy in America. I am assigning it as summer reading for rising juniors this year. I also learned a lot about Tocqueville and Beaumont's penological research and the horrors of the Sing Sing and Eastern State Penitentiary prisons.

[モーリー · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick and enjoyable read. I wish it was a bit longer.

[Mundi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been on a bit of a history bender for the past few years - no favorites, all history is interesting - and getting back down into American history has been especially intriguing, one, as new authors and producers put together their own intricate tales, and two, as a liberal dose of genealogy has flavored my personal knowledge of history.

Alexis De Toqueville was a french aristocrat who was commissioned to travel in America in 1830, and to report on the penitentiary system. As a personal journey, he was interested in seeing this experiment in democracy for himself. And Indians, he wanted to see the savage Native Americans.

And yet, even as an aristocrat, he was an fair-minded, observant, balanced, and objective man, and found much of interest in America under the category of Democracy. Especially in comparison to his own motherland of France, having birthed a revolution of her own only a few decades earlier.

He dutifully toured the penitentiaries, but his questions and his eyes were focused more on how these ideas of democracy and liberty were playing out in a country that was rapidly expanding west, with the perception at the time of unlimited resources.

In the south, slavery and the treatment of slaves disturbed him profoundly, yet he very clearly understood the law and the tenuous knit of the United States, and wrote with great accuracy what would drive America into a civil war only three decades later: "The only case in which a civil war could break out would be if the army was divided, one part raising the flag of rebellion and the other remaining loyal."

Toqueville published his observations a few years after his return (after the required report on the penal system of course) as 'Discovery of America'. It has been a literary hit ever since. Yet I'd like to be clear that this book is not Toqueville's published works, this is more of a biography of Toqueville, and includes passages and quotes from many others who also made observations in America around the same time period. There are many references to his frame of mind, and why he may have been able to comment in the manner that he did; letters from his travelling companion and friend that help to explain more of their journey.

This is more a summary of 'Discovery of America" and an examination of the man who wrote it, than the actual publication. But in my opinion, it is the journey that is of interest - not the destination.

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"'We go about constantly questioning the people we encounter, we squeeze whoever falls into our hands, and at night we write up what we've heard during the day.'" (Beaumont, 18)

"'Whenever someone fails to strike me with something unusual in the mind or feelings, I, so to speak, do not see him. I've always thought that mediocre men, just as much as people of merit, have noses, mouths, and eyes, but I've never been able to fix in my memory their particular version of these features ... I respect them, for they lead the world, but they bore me profoundly.'" (Tocqueville in Souvenirs, 20)

"'A description of a beautiful thing is always an ugly thing.'" (Tocqueville, 91)

"'I doubt More would have written his Utopia if he had been able to realize some of his dreams in English government, and I think the Germans of our day wouldn't philosophize so passionately about universal truth id they could put some of their ideas into political practice.'" (Tocqueville, 108)

"'The Americans don't have a literature, but they do have books.'" (Tocqueville, 109)

"'His mind has long lost all power of communicating any other. I know no man who lives in such utter intellectual solitude.'" (Harriet Martineau of Calhoun, 174).

"'I've hurled myself at America in a sort of fury ... I think about hardly anything else, even when I'm pulling my cock.'" (Tocqueville writing Democracy in America, 200)

[Marfy · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the Prologue, "The America that [Tocqueville] encountered was no abstract embodiment of democracy, but a turbulent, competitive, rapidly changing society. During the 1830s the nation was still young. It had recently elected its first populist president in Andrew Jackson, it was expanding aggressively westward, and it was deeply conscious of class, regional and racial tensions, forebodingly aware that civil war might one day tear it apart. This book seeks to bring that world and that traveler to life, through Tocqueville's own highly perceptive observations at the time and through the wealth of comments on Jacksonian America made by a host of contemporaries, especially other foreign visitors who published book-length accounts."

[Howard Mansfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leo Damrosch has a sure touch, deep knowledge of the period, and of Tocqueville’s French milieu. His own translations of Tocqueville’s letters and notes give Tocqueville a steady voice which is lacking in other books which rely on many different translations. Damrosch shows us what Tocqueville and his friend Gustave Beaumont saw, who they talked to, and what they missed and misjudged. What makes the book is the intelligence and good spirit of the 26-year-old French aristocrat eager to see this new nation. In Upstate New York, Tocqueville surveys the countryside from a church steeple. “When you climb a steeple there’s nothing as far as the eye can see but trees, agitated by the wind like waves in the sea. Everything attests to a new world.”

[Jrobertus]

Tocqueville and his friend Gustave Beaumont toured America in 1831-2, nominally to study the modern prison system. In fact they were sampling the life style of the new land. Tocqueville was a member of the aristocracy that survived the French Revolution and Terror, and held many theoretical ideals about democracy in America, and of course wrote his famous book on the subject. Damrosch draws on this, and on the work of other contemporary European observes to paint a picture of the new land. Business, money, course manners and braggadocio seem the order of the day, and yet there is an incredible dynamism that will clearly sweep the earth. Not a great read, but still worth knowing.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

De Tocqueville's "Discovery of America" (1831) remains a landmark evaluation of this country, its institutions, and its people. I read it years ago and was deeply impressed with the author's sharp, intuitive judgments. Now along comes Leo Damrosch's book about de Tocqueville and his book--and I found it fascinating! He analyzes de Tocqueville's background, family, and culture (post-revolution France); his and Beaumont's trip to America, their route, what they saw; and how it affected de Tocqueville and what he subsequently wrote. An important book for anyone interested in the American character, and a wonderful way to revisit the original.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As writer (actually, ghostwriter) for the director of a history museum, I have frequently delved into de Toqueville's Democracy in America, but I absolutely reveled in Damrosch's discussion of the young Frenchman's journey. Damrosch uses plenty of de Toqueville's best known work, but he also quotes from his letters and notes and from his companion Beaumont as well as other contemporary travelers and observers. It's a deep and fascinating exploration of an America that was but that also has continuing consequences that we experience 180 years later.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a wonderful look at the lives and journey of Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont who traveled to America in 1830 and observed the prisons, people, and government of this new land. As you all know the result was "Democracy in America." This is an engaging portrait of that journey and what was observed. Having read Democracy in America, this is an even more interesting look at the authors.
As it describes their lives, it describes the turmoil and politics of France. De Tocqueville has a talent for seeing into a subject and describing it. Read it!

[David R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine companion to the seminal "Democracy in America". Damrosch tells the story of Alexis de Tocqueville's voyage to the youthful USA and speculates on the encounters and discoveries that led to his eventual masterpiece. Along the way we derive the benefit of a look at 1830s America from an outsider's perspective. Highly recommended to any student of Americana and to all who had the pleasure of reading Tocqueville.

[Max · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a story behind the story. Everyone knows about "Democracy in America," but this book tells the story of Tocqueville's research into the famous book. Well researched through source documents, correspondence and historical records, I did learn some things, but the book never got me where I wanted to go. It was an interesting glimpse into different aspects of 19th century America, but I felt I learned more about traveling, society and customs than Tocqueville's work.

[Chris Laskey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent overview of the jacksonian period of the US from the cultural viewpoint of Tocqueville. This work really is meant to be a companion to Tocqueville's Democracy in America but it can be read independently without real issue. What this work provides is the context that tocqueville worked under and the influence of his french political and cultural upbringing in appreciating and understanding the American mindset of that period.

[Eric Atkisson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the perfect companion piece to "Democracy in America," as it follows Tocqueville and Beaumont on their travels through the United States of 1831, and shows how Tocqueville researched and wrote his famous masterpiece. I can't recommend it enough. I loved every word of it and felt like I was traveling with an old friend.

[Patti Hanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not an easy read but if you like the history of early America this gives a good overview of the emergence of the identify of Americans, especially our relationship with money, slaves and Native Americans.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is worthwhile and offers insights which would be helpful prior to reading Tocqueville's masterpiece. It is a pleasant and easy read, but a reader will shortchange his or herself if they rely on this book instead of reading a more complete version of Tocqueville's "Democracy in America".

[Creativemf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leo Damrosh adds classic Yankee style iconoclasm accounting the life of a true French Aristocrat (w a capital A) _ this text is peppered w/ humour and obviously jealousy that bring Tocqueville to a new generation of American rogues!

[Northshire Bookstore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Commencement speakers, teachers, and politicians all love to reference Tocqueville, but many of us actually know little about who he was or what he did. Leo Damrosch to the rescue with a concise yet complete study. Excellent writing, very engaging, and extraordinarily incisive. -- Bill L.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

As another reader said, a pleasant and easy read. But by no means insignificant—I have a great appreciation for the man and his times now. Damrosch brings Tocqueville to life, and he sounds like a man I would love to meet. He is always questioning, always doubting, always searching.

[Homer Hillis · Rating 4 out of 5]

great book , one of the best---highly recommend

[Shari · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read, now I need to get my hands on an acutal biography of Toqueville.

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable book that describes Tocqueville's visit to America in 1831. I'm not sure however, why Damrosch wrote the book. If he had. purpose, he didn't say.