The people, in whose name the struggle had taken place, conceived the desire of exercising the authority that it had acquired its democratic tendencies were awakened and having thrown off the yoke of the mother country, it aspired to independence of every kind.Īcquirement (n): a skill of mind or body resulting from continued endeavor Some of their fellow citizens acquired a power over the others that might truly have been called aristocratic if it had been capable of transmission from father to son.ĭemocratic (adj): government by majority rule of the peopleĪt this period society was shaken to its center. The only influence which obtained there was that of intellect the people became accustomed to revere certain names as representatives of knowledge and virtue. Even the germs of aristocracy were never planted in that part of the Union. I have stated in the preceding chapter that great equality existed among the immigrants who settled on the shores of New England. What is the enduring significance of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America?Īristocracy (n): government by the highest class, especially a hereditary nobility.What motivated the visit of Tocqueville and Beaumont to America?.Tocqueville wrote an enduring analysis allowing Americans to better understand themselves. Both men ultimately wrote successful books about their time in the United States, but it was Tocqueville’s Democracy in America that became one of the most significant political texts ever written about the United States. In 1831, they embarked on their nine-month, seven-thousand–mile tour of the United States east of the Mississippi, during which they studied not just the prisons but everything else about life in America. However, their larger goal was to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the political culture in the United States with an eye to influencing post-revolutionary France. prison system to enlighten reform of French prisons.
They decided to make a lengthy visit to the United States, where their official objective would be study of the U.S. In 1830, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont were both low-ranking members of the Versailles court of law who believed the era of monarchy and aristocracy was coming to an end. This Primary Source can be used to introduce students to an outsider’s perspective on the United States during the Jacksonian era.
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