Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2)

A >> Alexis de Toqueville >> Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2)


America is the only country in which it has been possible to witness
the natural and tranquil growth of society, and where the influences
exercised on the future condition of states by their origin is clearly
distinguishable. At the period when the peoples of Europe landed in the
New World their national characteristics were already completely formed;
each of them had a physiognomy of its own; and as they had already
attained that stage of civilization at which men are led to study
themselves, they have transmitted to us a faithful picture of their
opinions, their manners, and their laws. The men of the sixteenth
century are almost as well known to us as our contemporaries. America,
consequently, exhibits in the broad light of day the phenomena which the
ignorance or rudeness of earlier ages conceals from our researches.
Near enough to the time when the states of America were founded, to be
accurately acquainted with their elements, and sufficiently removed from
that period to judge of some of their results, the men of our own day
seem destined to see further than their predecessors into the series of
human events. Providence has given us a torch which our forefathers did
not possess, and has allowed us to discern fundamental causes in the
history of the world which the obscurity of the past concealed from
them. If we carefully examine the social and political state of America,
after having studied its history, we shall remain perfectly convinced
that not an opinion, not a custom, not a law, I may even say not an
event, is upon record which the origin of that people will not explain.
The readers of this book will find the germ of all that is to follow in
the present chapter, and the key to almost the whole work.

The emigrants who came, at different periods to occupy the territory now
covered by the American Union differed from each other in many respects;
their aim was not the same, and they governed themselves on different
principles. These men had, however, certain features in common, and
they were all placed in an analogous situation. The tie of language is
perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind. All
the emigrants spoke the same tongue; they were all offsets from the same
people. Born in a country which had been agitated for centuries by the
struggles of faction, and in which all parties had been obliged in
their turn to place themselves under the protection of the laws, their
political education had been perfected in this rude school, and they
were more conversant with the notions of right and the principles of
true freedom than the greater part of their European contemporaries. At
the period of their first emigrations the parish system, that fruitful
germ of free institutions, was deeply rooted in the habits of the
English; and with it the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people had
been introduced into the bosom of the monarchy of the House of Tudor.

The religious quarrels which have agitated the Christian world were then
rife. England had plunged into the new order of things with headlong
vehemence. The character of its inhabitants, which had always been
sedate and reflective, became argumentative and austere. General
information had been increased by intellectual debate, and the mind
had received a deeper cultivation. Whilst religion was the topic of
discussion, the morals of the people were reformed. All these national
features are more or less discoverable in the physiognomy of those
adventurers who came to seek a new home on the opposite shores of the
Atlantic.

Another remark, to which we shall hereafter have occasion to recur, is
applicable not only to the English, but to the French, the Spaniards,
and all the Europeans who successively established themselves in the New
World. All these European colonies contained the elements, if not the
development, of a complete democracy. Two causes led to this result. It
may safely be advanced, that on leaving the mother-country the emigrants
had in general no notion of superiority over one another. The happy and
the powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of
equality among men than poverty and misfortune. It happened, however,
on several occasions, that persons of rank were driven to America
by political and religious quarrels. Laws were made to establish a
gradation of ranks; but it was soon found that the soil of America was
opposed to a territorial aristocracy. To bring that refractory land into
cultivation, the constant and interested exertions of the owner himself
were necessary; and when the ground was prepared, its produce was found
to be insufficient to enrich a master and a farmer at the same time.
The land was then naturally broken up into small portions, which the
proprietor cultivated for himself. Land is the basis of an aristocracy,
which clings to the soil that supports it; for it is not by privileges
alone, nor by birth, but by landed property handed down from generation
to generation, that an aristocracy is constituted. A nation may present
immense fortunes and extreme wretchedness, but unless those fortunes are
territorial there is no aristocracy, but simply the class of the rich
and that of the poor.

All the British colonies had then a great degree of similarity at the
epoch of their settlement. All of them, from their first beginning,
seemed destined to witness the growth, not of the aristocratic liberty
of their mother-country, but of that freedom of the middle and lower
orders of which the history of the world had as yet furnished no
complete example.

In this general uniformity several striking differences were however
discernible, which it is necessary to point out. Two branches may be
distinguished in the Anglo-American family, which have hitherto grown
up without entirely commingling; the one in the South, the other in the
North.

Virginia received the first English colony; the emigrants took
possession of it in 1607. The idea that mines of gold and silver are
the sources of national wealth was at that time singularly prevalent in
Europe; a fatal delusion, which has done more to impoverish the nations
which adopted it, and has cost more lives in America, than the united
influence of war and bad laws. The men sent to Virginia *a were seekers
of gold, adventurers, without resources and without character, whose
turbulent and restless spirit endangered the infant colony, *b and
rendered its progress uncertain. The artisans and agriculturists arrived
afterwards; and, although they were a more moral and orderly race of
men, they were in nowise above the level of the inferior classes in
England. *c No lofty conceptions, no intellectual system, directed the
foundation of these new settlements. The colony was scarcely established
when slavery was introduced, *d and this was the main circumstance which
has exercised so prodigious an influence on the character, the laws, and
all the future prospects of the South. Slavery, as we shall afterwards
show, dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with
idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the
powers of the mind, and benumbs the activity of man. The influence of
slavery, united to the English character, explains the manners and the
social condition of the Southern States.

[Footnote a: The charter granted by the Crown of England in 1609
stipulated, amongst other conditions, that the adventurers should pay
to the Crown a fifth of the produce of all gold and silver mines. See
Marshall's "Life of Washington," vol. i. pp. 18-66.] [Footnote b: A
large portion of the adventurers, says Stith ("History of Virginia"),
were unprincipled young men of family, whom their parents were glad to
ship off, discharged servants, fraudulent bankrupts, or debauchees; and
others of the same class, people more apt to pillage and destroy than
to assist the settlement, were the seditious chiefs, who easily led this
band into every kind of extravagance and excess. See for the history of
Virginia the following works:--

"History of Virginia, from the First Settlements in the year 1624," by
Smith.

"History of Virginia," by William Stith.

"History of Virginia, from the Earliest Period," by Beverley.]

[Footnote c: It was not till some time later that a certain number of
rich English capitalists came to fix themselves in the colony.]

[Footnote d: Slavery was introduced about the year 1620 by a Dutch
vessel which landed twenty negroes on the banks of the river James. See
Chalmer.]

In the North, the same English foundation was modified by the most
opposite shades of character; and here I may be allowed to enter into
some details. The two or three main ideas which constitute the basis
of the social theory of the United States were first combined in the
Northern English colonies, more generally denominated the States of
New England. *e The principles of New England spread at first to the
neighboring states; they then passed successively to the more distant
ones; and at length they imbued the whole Confederation. They now extend
their influence beyond its limits over the whole American world. The
civilization of New England has been like a beacon lit upon a hill,
which, after it has diffused its warmth around, tinges the distant
horizon with its glow.

[Footnote e: The States of New England are those situated to the east of
the Hudson; they are now six in number: 1, Connecticut; 2, Rhode Island;
3, Massachusetts; 4, Vermont; 5, New Hampshire; 6, Maine.]

The foundation of New England was a novel spectacle, and all the
circumstances attending it were singular and original. The large
majority of colonies have been first inhabited either by men without
education and without resources, driven by their poverty and their
misconduct from the land which gave them birth, or by speculators
and adventurers greedy of gain. Some settlements cannot even boast so
honorable an origin; St. Domingo was founded by buccaneers; and the
criminal courts of England originally supplied the population of
Australia.

The settlers who established themselves on the shores of New England all
belonged to the more independent classes of their native country. Their
union on the soil of America at once presented the singular phenomenon
of a society containing neither lords nor common people, neither rich
nor poor. These men possessed, in proportion to their number, a greater
mass of intelligence than is to be found in any European nation of
our own time. All, without a single exception, had received a good
education, and many of them were known in Europe for their talents and
their acquirements. The other colonies had been founded by adventurers
without family; the emigrants of New England brought with them the best
elements of order and morality--they landed in the desert accompanied
by their wives and children. But what most especially distinguished them
was the aim of their undertaking. They had not been obliged by necessity
to leave their country; the social position they abandoned was one to
be regretted, and their means of subsistence were certain. Nor did
they cross the Atlantic to improve their situation or to increase their
wealth; the call which summoned them from the comforts of their homes
was purely intellectual; and in facing the inevitable sufferings of
exile their object was the triumph of an idea.

The emigrants, or, as they deservedly styled themselves, the Pilgrims,
belonged to that English sect the austerity of whose principles had
acquired for them the name of Puritans. Puritanism was not merely a
religious doctrine, but it corresponded in many points with the most
absolute democratic and republican theories. It was this tendency which
had aroused its most dangerous adversaries. Persecuted by the Government
of the mother-country, and disgusted by the habits of a society opposed
to the rigor of their own principles, the Puritans went forth to seek
some rude and unfrequented part of the world, where they could live
according to their own opinions, and worship God in freedom.

A few quotations will throw more light upon the spirit of these pious
adventures than all we can say of them. Nathaniel Morton, *f the
historian of the first years of the settlement, thus opens his subject:

[Footnote f: "New England's Memorial," p. 13; Boston, 1826. See also
"Hutchinson's History," vol. ii. p. 440.]

"Gentle Reader,--I have for some length of time looked upon it as a duty
incumbent, especially on the immediate successors of those that have had
so large experience of those many memorable and signal demonstrations
of God's goodness, viz., the first beginners of this Plantation in New
England, to commit to writing his gracious dispensations on that
behalf; having so many inducements thereunto, not onely otherwise but
so plentifully in the Sacred Scriptures: that so, what we have seen,
and what our fathers have told us (Psalm lxxviii. 3, 4), we may not hide
from our children, showing to the generations to come the praises of the
Lord; that especially the seed of Abraham his servant, and the children
of Jacob his chosen (Psalm cv. 5, 6), may remember his marvellous
works in the beginning and progress of the planting of New England, his
wonders and the judgments of his mouth; how that God brought a vine into
this wilderness; that he cast out the heathen, and planted it; that he
made room for it and caused it to take deep root; and it filled the land
(Psalm lxxx. 8, 9). And not onely so, but also that he hath guided his
people by his strength to his holy habitation and planted them in the
mountain of his inheritance in respect of precious Gospel enjoyments:
and that as especially God may have the glory of all unto whom it
is most due; so also some rays of glory may reach the names of those
blessed Saints that were the main instruments and the beginning of this
happy enterprise."

It is impossible to read this opening paragraph without an involuntary
feeling of religious awe; it breathes the very savor of Gospel
antiquity. The sincerity of the author heightens his power of language.
The band which to his eyes was a mere party of adventurers gone forth
to seek their fortune beyond seas appears to the reader as the germ of a
great nation wafted by Providence to a predestined shore.

The author thus continues his narrative of the departure of the first
pilgrims:--

"So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, *g which had been
their resting-place for above eleven years; but they knew that they were
pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things,
but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God
hath prepared for them a city (Heb. xi. 16), and therein quieted their
spirits. When they came to Delfs-Haven they found the ship and all
things ready; and such of their friends as could not come with them
followed after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt,
and to take their leaves of them. One night was spent with little sleep
with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse,
and other real expressions of true Christian love. The next day they
went on board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the
sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and
prayers did sound amongst them; what tears did gush from every eye,
and pithy speeches pierced each other's heart, that sundry of the Dutch
strangers that stood on the Key as spectators could not refrain from
tears. But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away, that
were thus loth to depart, their Reverend Pastor falling down on his
knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with
most fervent prayers unto the Lord and his blessing; and then, with
mutual embraces and many tears they took their leaves one of another,
which proved to be the last leave to many of them."

[Footnote g: The emigrants were, for the most part, godly Christians
from the North of England, who had quitted their native country because
they were "studious of reformation, and entered into covenant to walk
with one another according to the primitive pattern of the Word of God."
They emigrated to Holland, and settled in the city of Leyden in 1610,
where they abode, being lovingly respected by the Dutch, for many years:
they left it in 1620 for several reasons, the last of which was, that
their posterity would in a few generations become Dutch, and so lose
their interest in the English nation; they being desirous rather
to enlarge His Majesty's dominions, and to live under their natural
prince.--Translator's Note.]

The emigrants were about 150 in number, including the women and the
children. Their object was to plant a colony on the shores of the
Hudson; but after having been driven about for some time in the Atlantic
Ocean, they were forced to land on that arid coast of New England which
is now the site of the town of Plymouth. The rock is still shown on
which the pilgrims disembarked. *h

[Footnote h: This rock is become an object of veneration in the United
States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns of
the Union. Does not this sufficiently show how entirely all human power
and greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of
a few outcasts pressed for an instant, and this stone becomes famous; it
is treasured by a great nation, its very dust is shared as a relic: and
what is become of the gateways of a thousand palaces?]

"But before we pass on," continues our historian, "let the reader
with me make a pause and seriously consider this poor people's present
condition, the more to be raised up to admiration of God's goodness
towards them in their preservation: for being now passed the vast
ocean, and a sea of troubles before them in expectation, they had now
no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no
houses, or much less towns to repair unto to seek for succour: and for
the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of the country
know them to be sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms,
dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search unknown coasts.
Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full
of wilde beasts, and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were,
they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save
upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in
respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand
in appearance with a weather-beaten face, and the whole country full of
woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew; if they looked
behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed, and was
now as a main bar or gulph to separate them from all the civil parts of
the world."

It must not be imagined that the piety of the Puritans was of a merely
speculative kind, or that it took no cognizance of the course of worldly
affairs. Puritanism, as I have already remarked, was scarcely less a
political than a religious doctrine. No sooner had the emigrants landed
on the barren coast described by Nathaniel Morton than it was their
first care to constitute a society, by passing the following Act:

"In the name of God. Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal
subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, etc., etc., Having
undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian Faith,
and the honour of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first
colony in the northern parts of Virginia; Do by these presents solemnly
and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and
combine ourselves together into a civil body politick, for our better
ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid: and by
virtue hereof do enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws,
ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers, from time to time, as
shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the
Colony: unto which we promise all due submission and obedience," etc. *i

[Footnote i: The emigrants who founded the State of Rhode Island in
1638, those who landed at New Haven in 1637, the first settlers in
Connecticut in 1639, and the founders of Providence in 1640, began in
like manner by drawing up a social contract, which was acceded to by all
the interested parties. See "Pitkin's History," pp. 42 and 47.]

This happened in 1620, and from that time forwards the emigration went
on. The religious and political passions which ravaged the British
Empire during the whole reign of Charles I drove fresh crowds of
sectarians every year to the shores of America. In England the
stronghold of Puritanism was in the middle classes, and it was from the
middle classes that the majority of the emigrants came. The population
of New England increased rapidly; and whilst the hierarchy of rank
despotically classed the inhabitants of the mother-country, the colony
continued to present the novel spectacle of a community homogeneous in
all its parts. A democracy, more perfect than any which antiquity had
dreamt of, started in full size and panoply from the midst of an ancient
feudal society.




Chapter II: Origin Of The Anglo-Americans--Part II


The English Government was not dissatisfied with an emigration which
removed the elements of fresh discord and of further revolutions. On the
contrary, everything was done to encourage it, and great exertions were
made to mitigate the hardships of those who sought a shelter from the
rigor of their country's laws on the soil of America. It seemed as
if New England was a region given up to the dreams of fancy and the
unrestrained experiments of innovators.

The English colonies (and this is one of the main causes of their
prosperity) have always enjoyed more internal freedom and more political
independence than the colonies of other nations; but this principle of
liberty was nowhere more extensively applied than in the States of New
England.

It was generally allowed at that period that the territories of the
New World belonged to that European nation which had been the first to
discover them. Nearly the whole coast of North America thus became a
British possession towards the end of the sixteenth century. The means
used by the English Government to people these new domains were of
several kinds; the King sometimes appointed a governor of his own
choice, who ruled a portion of the New World in the name and under the
immediate orders of the Crown; *j this is the colonial system adopted by
other countries of Europe. Sometimes grants of certain tracts were made
by the Crown to an individual or to a company, *k in which case all the
civil and political power fell into the hands of one or more persons,
who, under the inspection and control of the Crown, sold the lands and
governed the inhabitants. Lastly, a third system consisted in allowing a
certain number of emigrants to constitute a political society under the
protection of the mother-country, and to govern themselves in whatever
was not contrary to her laws. This mode of colonization, so remarkably
favorable to liberty, was only adopted in New England. *l

[Footnote j: This was the case in the State of New York.]

[Footnote k: Maryland, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey were
in this situation. See "Pitkin's History," vol. i. pp. 11-31.]

[Footnote l: See the work entitled "Historical Collection of State
Papers and other authentic Documents intended as materials for a History
of the United States of America, by Ebenezer Hasard. Philadelphia,
1792," for a great number of documents relating to the commencement
of the colonies, which are valuable from their contents and their
authenticity: amongst them are the various charters granted by the King
of England, and the first acts of the local governments.

See also the analysis of all these charters given by Mr. Story, Judge
of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Introduction to his
"Commentary on the Constitution of the United States." It results from
these documents that the principles of representative government and
the external forms of political liberty were introduced into all the
colonies at their origin. These principles were more fully acted upon in
the North than in the South, but they existed everywhere.]

In 1628 *m a charter of this kind was granted by Charles I to the
emigrants who went to form the colony of Massachusetts. But, in general,
charters were not given to the colonies of New England till they had
acquired a certain existence. Plymouth, Providence, New Haven, the State
of Connecticut, and that of Rhode Island *n were founded without the
co-operation and almost without the knowledge of the mother-country.
The new settlers did not derive their incorporation from the seat of
the empire, although they did not deny its supremacy; they constituted
a society of their own accord, and it was not till thirty or forty
years afterwards, under Charles II. that their existence was legally
recognized by a royal charter.