Introduction

To begin, with the short time I have I will first provide a brief outline of
my research and argument, touching momentarily on its relevance and
importance. I will then proceed to quickly describe the authors I have chosen
as the subject of my research as well as my reasoning for choosing them. I
will then spend the bulk of my time working systematically through my
findings on each variable of my research.
I have written on 19th Century French Liberal views of America. The
works of French aristocrats and travelers Alexis de Tocqueville, Gustave de
Beaumont, and Michel de Chevalier serve as the objects of my inquiry. I have
analyzed the thought of each author on four topics relating to the America of
their day equality, liberty, commerce, and the future of the world and
Americas role in it. My conclusion is that while each author approaches
America in a different way and provides nuances not found in his peers, on
whole the three paint a coherent picture of 19th century America as a place of
radical equality, endangered liberty, heightened greed and lowered spirit.
Each sees America and democracy as Europes future and hopes their study
can provide both good tidings and warning to their compatriots back in
France. Tocqueville wrote: in America I saw more than America; I sought
there an image of democracy itself, of its penchants, of its character, of its
prejudices, of its passions; I wanted to understand it if only at least to know
what we ought to hope or fear from it.

The importance of this research is twofold. First, anyone who has ever
traveled through France, Paris specifically, might be familiar with a part of
the contemporary French view of America and Americans as being
backwards, cultureless, base living to work rather than working to live - and
perhaps most flattering of all rich. This study helps to situate French views
of America today in an historical context by shedding light on how
conceptions of America such as these came to be in the French psyche.
Second, insofar as these authors have something real to say about America
and democracy, we as Americans should pay careful attention. If America
today has retained any of the tendencies of its 19th century self as observed
by these travelers, then just as they sought to suppress its vices and
promote its virtues in Europe so too should we consider doing the same in
our own country today.
Context/Biographical information
Tocqueville and Beaumont 1831-1832 north and south
Chevalier 1833-1835 west saint simonian, view of history as
progressive, centered on commerce, transportation and industry
two inseprables
One, the severe thinker, the other, the man of gushing feelings, go together
like a bottle of vinegar and a bottle of oil. Heinrich Heine, German poet

Equality

For all three of these authors, equality is the essence of America, and a
condition from which all others will inevitably be influenced. This is why I
begin with equality. Considering the subject, Beaumont writes of America,
I found not only political equality, set in motion by the cooperation of all
citizens of the country, but I could see social equality everywhere, in money
matters, in the professions, in all their customs. Beaumonts 1st appendix
This echoes Tocquevilles finding about American equality, that it is not
only political in the new democracy, but social throughout the entire state.
After all, Tocquevilles very definition of democracy returns to the equality of
conditions, or the similarity in wealth and status in America that cannot be
found in Aristocratic societies, such as his own. Chevalier muses on the
subject by way of personal anecdote. He recalls sitting in the lobby of a hotel
in Cincinnati and observing a stocky old man in plain clothes, full of life for
someone of his age. Chevalier is so taken with the old mans vigor that he
inquires with a friend about his identity. The friend replies that the old man is
in fact American war hero William Henry Harrison. Chevalier, after being star
struck in a way only a man of the 1830s could have been, is then met with a
feeling of repugnance which he documents well in subsequent pages. He
wonders how a great American general could be wearing the clothes of a
common person, mingling among them as though he were not of a higher
birth or rank. This speaks, truly, to the radical equality observed in America
that had not ever been seen before in Europe. The nobles of France would

never have done as Harrison did, and Chevaliers momentary disgust at the
sight speaks to the strangeness of the scene for the time.
Equality is, of course, a great danger as presented in Tocqueville. The
other authors follow suite. All three caution their readers concerning the
tyranny of the majority which arises from democratic equality. Each citizens
voice is not only considered politically equal in voting, but also socially equal
on the basis of the assumption that no individual is inherently greatly
superior to any other in intelligence. Therefore, the opinion of the majority
must be the most reasonable, as the greatest number of nearly equally
adept citizens has arrived at it. The tyranny of the majority will influence in
some degree the thoughts of each author on each of the coming topics.
Finally, Tocqueville recognizes equality as a threat to liberty, and, as we
shall see, Beaumont provides perhaps the best example of this reality.
Tocqueville writes,
There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that incites men
to want all to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the
small to the rank of the great; but one also encounters a depraved taste for
equality in the human heart that brings the weak to want to draw the strong
to their level and that reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to
inequality in freedom. Tocqueville

Liberty

With that, I will move to liberty. American liberty is, like equality,
something not wholly known in the old world. When it appears
unencumbered, the authors maintain a certain reverence for it. However, a
discussion of liberty or America of the 19th century would be incomplete
without attending to the extreme deprivation of liberty among African slaves
in the country. That is where I shall turn now.
Beaumont offers the most interesting account of slavery of the three
authors.
It is this prejudice ... which forms the principal subject of my book. I wished
to show how great are the miseries of slavery, and how deeply it affects
traditions, after it has legally ceased to exist. It is, above all, these secondary
consequences of an evil whose first cause has disappeared which I have
endeavored to develop. Beaumont on his definition of slavery

It is true that according to law a Negro is not a man; he is a chattel, a thing.

Yes, but you will see that he is a thinking thing, an acting thing, that can hold
a dagger! Inferior race! So you say! You have measured the Negro brain and
said There is no room in that narrow skull for anything but griefl'.... You are
mistaken; your measurements were wrong; in that brutish head there is a
compartment that contains a powerful faculty, that of revenge-an implacable
vengeance, horrible but intelligent.... He grovels! Yes, for two centuries he
has groveled at your feet-some day he will stand up and look you in the eye,
and kill you." Speech by George from Marie.

This is the place in which to inform the serious portion of the public I am
addressing that at the end of each volume will be found, under the heading
of appendices and notes, a considerable quantity of material treated
seriously, not only in matter but also in manner. Beaumonts introduction
Speech by George from Marie.
This is the place in which to inform the serious portion of the public I am
addressing that at the end of each volume will be found, under the heading
of appendices and notes, a considerable quantity of material treated
seriously, not only in matter but also in manner. Beaumonts introduction

Commerce

The professions, whose diversity is so great, cause no dissimilarity in

position among those who practice them. Everywhere, any professions,
employment, or trade is considered as an industry; shop keeping, literature,
the law, civil service, the ministry, all are industrial careers; those who follow
them are more or less happy, more or less well off, but they have equality
among themselves; what they do is not the same but it is of the same
nature. Beaumonts 1st appendix
When Mr. John Quincy Adams became president, he had a billiard table
placed in the presidents house, and such is the real of affected abhorrence
here of anything called a game that this billiard table was actually one of the

arguments against the re-election of Mr. Adams. It is a scandal, an

abomination of abominations, was the general cry. Chevalier
Chevalier story about rich west point graduate becoming shopkeeper after
retirement to avoid leisure.
The moral aspect of Cincinnati is delightful in the eyes of him who prefers
work to everything else, with whom work can take the place of everything
else. Chevalier on Cincinnati

For myself, it is with all sincerity that I declare that I would infinitely prefer
sharing the apartment of a party of well-conditioned pigs to being confined
to a Mississippi steamboat cabin Beaumont quoting a friend.

Future
All nations which have been the glory of the world have been ground to a
lifeless dust, like the ashes of tombs, by the pressure of a Past which
hemmed them in on every side. Will the Europe of our age undergo the fate
of its predecessors? There is reason to hope that it will be more fortunate;
for, having their example before its eyes, it must be wiser than they, and it is
at the same time more elastic in its temper and more flexible in its forms.
Chevalier, Democracy