Alexis de Tocqueville took his American roadtrip in the 1830’s and not only saw the New World whole; he read the American character and foresaw its future. De Tocqueville traveled by foot and horseback, stagecoach and riverboat circling the young country from New York City to the Mississippi and the deep south. He met tradesmen, farmers, craftsmen, manufacturers, teachers, ministers, Indians and Indian hunters, slaves and masters, even Supreme Court Justices and Presidents.
An aristocrat born in Napoleon’s France, de Tocqueville saw in America “a great democratic revolution” that was changing the world. And he saw the future: including our civil war over slavery, and also the American Century, the rivalry with Russia, and something very like our presidential muddle in Florida. Alexis de Tocqueville’s fortune-telling account of American character and destiny is this on The Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Harvey Mansfield, Professor of Political Science at Harvard and translator of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America