In his lecture on the self-made man in 1872, Frederick Douglass disclaimed, “It must in truth be said, though it may not accord well with self-conscious individuality and self-conceit, that no possible native force of character, and no depth of wealth and originality, can lift a man into absolute independence of his fellowmen.” The French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville feared that American individualism would lead to a situation where “each man is forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.”
