Book Review: Democracy in America

Title: Democracy in America

Author: Alexis de Tocqueville

Translator: Henry Reeve

Date: 1835 (French), 2000 (English paperback)

Publisher: Bantam (2000)

ISBN: 0-553-21464-0

Length: 943 pages, plus introduction by Joseph Epstein

Quote: “America is great because America is good; and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Yes, this is the book that contains the famous quote. First, let me acknowledge the three things students hate about this book: (1) it’s long, (2) it’s assigned reading, and (3) it’s written in generalizations with a minimum of fun facts and anecdotes. About the first two of those objections nothing can be said, but it may be helpful for students to know that French intellectuals of Tocqueville’s day defined science as the pursuit of generalizations; Tocqueville had to write for his audience.

Sometimes  people wonder why writers “show off” by using long, bland, ugly words. Was it necessary to say “This repugnance naturally attains its utmost height” rather than “People are disgusted”? Yes; in Tocqueville’s case, there is a reason. Many of those bland, four- and five-syllable words are common to French and English; repugnance was the word Tocqueville actually wrote (with an accent mark over the first E). English editions of Democracy in America aren’t hard to find, but if you had to read the book in French, you could read paragraph after paragraph without having to look up a word.

Although Epstein makes the point that Tocqueville would have thought his book gained “power” from its generalizations, he did cite some specific facts. Like many nineteenth-century authors, he often copied material from other books without acknowledgments. He also tended to feel that, as he says when making a statistical point on page 339, “A single fact will suffice to show...” the generalization he’s about to make. In an AC article on Ellen White, who instructed her secretary to copy whole pages from other books but not to insert footnotes or other credits, I mentioned that one obsessive-compulsive reader had dug up dozens of uncredited sources that were quoted in her books. The same thing could have been done for Tocqueville. If you wanted more details about his assertion that “Congress completely abandoned the principle of the tariff,” you could obviously check the Congressional Record, but for which year? He doesn’t say. Or did he read the story in current newspapers? He doesn’t say. You’re supposed to take his word for these things. If it really mattered to you, you would already have known the story...right?

A feature of Tocqueville’s writing that may be more pleasing to modern readers is his concern with “equality,” the extent to which Americans were really learning to practice democracy. His concern for minority groups was at least a hundred years ahead of his time. If his generalizations about ethnic groups are sometimes judgmental, his tone is consistently that of a logical critic who wants to help everyone toward perfection. There’s an especially scathing comment on the French-American minority on page 399.

Many European authors visited the United States, during the early nineteenth century, and criticized our ancestors for the benefit of European readers. Charles Dickens’ and Sarah Kemble Knight’s efforts in this line are still occasionally read for their literary merit, and a shameless poseur called Favell Mortimer has recently been reprinted because (a) she didn’t actually travel and (b) her book is so awful, but Tocqueville is the only one who’s still found on required reading lists. Because he had enough insight into human nature to tell us that we were great because we were good? Partly. But he also probed more seriously into our political theory and practice than many Europeans, who were more interested in describing the roads (primitive) and lodging places (very few of which rated five stars). The selections from Democracy in America reprinted in textbooks tend to be flattering, but the book also called early Americans to account for several things.

“The zeal of [the legislator’s] enactments induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same Code which prohibits the use of tobacco...In 1649 a solemn association was formed in Boston to check the worldly luxury of long hair.”

“It is the misfortune of [American] Indians to be brought into contact with a civilized people, which is also (it must be owned) the most avaricious nation on the globe...and to receive knowledge from the hand of oppression.”

“It is...my opinion that by changing their administrative forms as often as they do, the inhabitants of the United States compromise the future stability of their government.”

Although it’s a long slow read, this book really is valuable for all students of history and government.