first volume of Democracy in America was published to instant acclaim.
Furthermore, the Nolla critical edition of Democracy in America provides an unprecedented insight into how Tocqueville’s text was written and how its content evolved over time. Tocqueville began with the notebooks and letters he had written while in America. He worked his way through the extensive collection of printed material he had accumulated. He continued to communicate and interrogate his American acquaintances by mail. To help him to complete his research, he employed two young Americans, Francis Lippitt and Theodore Sedgwick, as his assistants. The manuscript was passed on to his family, to Gustave de Beaumont, and to Louis de Kergorlay, and in turn received extensive, expert comment. Certain sections were read out to close friends. Given this thoroughness, it is difficult to know what to make of the charge that Tocqueville was not sufficiently inquisitive and was unscientific in his use of contemporary sources. That aside, we know that his long reflection upon his investigation of America convinced Tocqueville that “[a] new political science is needed for a world entirely new.”55 Later Tocqueville was to sketch out in greater detail what he took the “science of politics” to be, distinguishing it in the process from the “art of government.”56
Why was a new science of politics required? For the simple reason, as Tocqueville pointed out in his own introduction, that “a great democratic revolution is taking place,” and this was a revolution where “the generating fact from which each particular fact seemed to derive” was
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revealed in American society. The corollary to this, as James T. Schleifer has observed, is that Tocqueville discounted “the traditional inclination to draw lessons about democracy from ancient and Renaissance texts.”57 The entire book, Tocqueville confided, was written “under the impression of a sort of religious terror” produced “by the sight of this irresistible revolution that has marched for so many centuries over all obstacles.”58 To wish to stop it was to act against God himself. The best we could do was to accommodate ourselves to the social state that Providence wished to impose upon us.
There is much that might be said about the merits and character of this avowedly new political science. To what extent was it genuinely new and innovative? Was it to be value free? Did it possess predictive power? To what extent was it philosophically and empirically flawed? Whatever the answer to these questions, there can be no doubt that Tocqueville did not imagine that his new political science amounted (as Sheldon Wolin has recently suggested)59 to a form of political impressionism. The guiding assumption was that, sooner or later, Europe would also arrive at something near to the equality of conditions. This did not mean that Europe would be obliged to draw the same political conclusions from this social state as had been done in America or that democracy would produce only one form of government. It had therefore been no part of Tocqueville’s purpose to write a “panegyric” on America or to advocate “any particular form of government in general.” Rather, his hypothesis was that, beyond a legitimate curiosity, one could “find lessons there from which we would be able to profit.”60
This was achieved with a level of methodological self-awareness and sophistication that was unusual for the age and certainly unusual for the subject matter. In both the printed text and his notes, Tocqueville acknowledged that nothing would be easier than to criticize his book. It would be sufficient, he acknowledged, only “to contrast an isolated
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fact to the whole of the facts,” “a detached idea to the whole of the ideas.” Yet, he remained adamant that he had “never yielded, except unknowingly, to the need to adapt facts to ideas, instead of subjecting ideas to facts.”61 To this disclaimer, he added a clear statement of his methodology. “When a point could be established with the help of written documents,” Tocqueville explained, “I have taken care to turn to original texts and to the most authentic and respected works. I have indicated my sources in notes, and everyone will be able to verify them. When it was a matter of opinions, of political customs, of observations of mores, I sought to consult the most enlightened men. If something happened to be important or doubtful, I was not content with one witness, but decided only on the basis of the body of testimonies.”62 To an extent, Tocqueville conceded, this had to be taken on trust, because it needed not to be forgotten that “the author who wants to make himself understood is obliged to push each of his ideas to all of their theoretical consequences, and often to the limits of what is false and impractical.”63 Tocqueville therefore, and not without some justification, made a plea for generosity on the part of the reader. “I would like you,” he remarked, “to grant me the favor of reading me with the same spirit that presided over my work, and would like you to judge this book by the general impression that it leaves, as I myself came to a decision, not due to a particular reason but due to a mass of reasons.”64 In his unpublished notes, he added the following remark: “To whoever will do that and then does not agree with me, I am ready to submit. For if I am sure of having sincerely sought the truth, I am far from considering myself as certain to have found it.”65 Tocqueville’s modesty in this and (as we have seen) with regard to other elements of his inquiry on America seems frequently to have been overlooked by his critics.
What of the voyage itself and how did Tocqueville come to understand his journey into America?66 We have to acknowledge, with François
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Furet, that “the genesis of Tocqueville’s visit to America is shrouded in mystery.”67 When and why he decided to undertake this hazardous enterprise is difficult, if not impossible, to gauge. Next, we should begin by remembering that Tocqueville was only one of many French men and women who, throughout the nineteenth century, crossed the Atlantic to witness the New World at first hand. We should then add that his journey was in many ways not dissimilar from that of substantial numbers of his compatriots. Most arrived by way of New York and were immediately overwhelmed by its sense of fervent and perpetual activity. Educated visitors tended to make their way to Boston. Substantial numbers visited Canada and the Great Lakes (and, like Tocqueville, saw and wondered at the startling beauty of Niagara Falls),68 but few ventured to the South, preferring rather to satisfy their curiosity on the Eastern Seaboard. Typically people came for an extended stay, but it was unusual for it to last longer than between three and six months. Rarely did the French come alone—characteristically they came with a friend or member of the family—and even more rarely did they decide not to return home. But for all of them, America began the moment they boarded ship and set sail, most often (as in Tocqueville’s case) from Le Havre.
With the advent of the steam ship, the journey time was reduced to between one and two weeks, and it could be undertaken in relative comfort. In Tocqueville’s day, a journey time of between six and seven weeks was quite normal, and it was not without hazard or hardship.69 As Jacques Portes recounts, travelers used their enforced leisure to read books about the United States, to meet Americans, and to improve their often very poor English.70 Tocqueville was no exception.71 Armed with a copy of Basil Hall’s Travels in North America and Volney’s Tableau du climat et du sol des Etats-Unis d’Amérique, Tocqueville embarked on
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April 2, 1831, and, with the ship’s provisions almost exhausted, landed at Newport, Rhode Island, on May 9. A day later he and Beaumont arrived in New York. A long letter to his mother, written on board ship and dated April 26,72 vividly portrays what reads as an almost existential experience. No sooner was he out of sight of the French coast and laid low by seasickness than Tocqueville began to doubt that he would see dry land again. He quickly came to see his world as “a kind of narrow circle upon which play heavy clouds.” To this he added that “the solitude of the ocean is a very remarkable thing to experience.” His vessel came to take on the form of a separate universe, with its own rituals and codes of behavior. Noah’s ark, he told his mother, did not contain a greater variety of animals. Although tightly confined, everyone acted as if they were completely alone and enjoyed a level of freedom unknown elsewhere. “Everyone,” he wrote, “drinks, laughs, eats or cries as the fancy takes him.” Privacy was almost nonexistent, leading Tocqueville to conclude that they were living in the public space like the ancients. Weather permitting, he and Beaumont tried to work as normal. After dinner they spoke English to “all those prepared