On April 30, 1789, George Washington stood on a balcony in New York, his hand on the Bible. Before a large crowd at Federal Hall on Wall Street, he took the oath of office to be the nation’s first president under its new constitution. Less than three months later, the nation that practically assured America’s victory in its revolution was suddenly embroiled in chaos. On July 14, 1789, France would witness the beginning of its own revolution when French revolutionaries stormed the Bastille.
The French-American connection, however, would not be severed. Through turmoil, wars, and political uncertainties, the two nations—one new and another constantly renewed—would retain their connections. Born six years after the end of the French Revolution and not long after Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor of France, Alexis de Tocqueville would become the perpetual personification of the French-American connection.
Tocqueville was born into the nobility, which made his existence rather precarious. In fact, his noble blood nearly made him nonexistent. During the Revolution’s Reign of Terror, Tocqueville’s aunts and cousins were sent to the guillotine, along with his grandparents and his great grandfather, Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, who had defended King Louis XVI. His parents had been imprisoned, awaiting their execution, but were spared by the sudden downfall of the Robespierre regime, which ended the Reign of Terror.
According to Olivier Zunz, one of the leading scholars on Tocqueville, the Tocquevilles were Legitimists who remained loyal to the Bourbons despite the persecution. Growing up in Napoleon’s France, the young Tocqueville retained an affinity for monarchy. His eventual journey through America, however, would change all that.
Tocqueville’s Prison Reform Scheme
Exiled on the island of St. Helena, Napoleon’s reign ended in 1815. The French Restoration had placed Louis XVIII, the brother of Louis XVI, on the throne, where he would remain until his death in 1824. Patience and loyalty to the House of Bourbon had paid dividends. Tocqueville’s father, a royal prefect within the administration, found his son a position at a Versailles courthouse as an apprentice prosecutor. Though he took the work seriously and demonstrated his intelligence, he was not altogether successful in Versailles.The French Restoration continued under Charles X, who reigned until the July Revolution—a three day revolution in July 1830 that overthrew the Bourbon king and reinstituted the constitutional monarchy under Louis-Philippe.
“Alexis wasn’t sure he could accept the Revolution of 1830, which brought constitutional monarchy, because he was still loyal to the absolute monarchy,” Zunz said during a conversation on The Sons of History podcast. “He did swear an oath of loyalty to it because his family advised him to so that he could have a career.”
Instead of staying in France, though, Tocqueville decided on a different venture. He and his friend, Gustave de Beaumont, schemed a way to visit America while also benefiting the topsy-turvy French justice system. Their proposal was to study the American penitentiary system.
Zunz, who wrote about Tocqueville’s experience in America in his book “The Man Who Understood Democracy,” said that prison reform provided a viable pretext for visiting the new country. The young lawyer’s sole reason for visiting America was to see if he could endure a democratic form of government if it ever came to France. The proposal was accepted by the minister of justice. Tocqueville and Beaumont were soon sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to visit the new republic.
Tocqueville in America
At 26 years old, Tocqueville, along with Beaumont, arrived in America in 1831. As a testament to his brilliance, the Frenchman learned English while sailing across the ocean. The two would spend the next nine and a half months visiting the new country, meeting influential people like John Quincy Adams and Sam Houston, and discovering the work ethic, religious practices, and the social harmony of the Americans. Tocqueville, a lifelong abolitionist, did note the irony that Americans had fought a war for liberty, yet still practiced slavery. While there, of course, they visited prisons and learned about how America operated their judicial system.Throughout their travels, they filled notebooks with thoughts and observations, and also filled out several notebooks with sketches of what they saw. Tocqueville’s experience would result in the two volume masterpiece: “Democracy in America.”
“‘Democracy in America’ is only partly a book of observation,” Zunz said. “It is not a travelog. It’s a book of reflection.”
Zunz said the first volume, published in 1835, is primarily about America, while the second volume, published in 1840, is about the theory of democracy. America had proven to him that the theory of equality through democracy could work.
“In this circle of Legitimists, equality was the worst thing they could think of,” Zunz pointed out. “Equality was leveling. Taking away their privilege and prerogatives. It was a bad word. What Tocquevulle discovered in America was that equality could be the source of liberty. Equality could give a greater number of people the opportunity to achieve their goals, to realize their lives. Instead of meaning leveling, it meant uplifting.”
Of course, Tocqueville pointed out that the equality practiced in America was predominantly associated with the white male population.
Convincing the French of Democracy
Although Tocqueville described himself as aristocratic by instinct and democratic by reason, he made the shift from monarchist to democrat. According to Zunz, he was the only one in his family and among his friends and extended network to embrace democracy.“The trip to America was a big part of it. Writing ‘Democracy in America’ was an equally big part of it,” Zunz said. “The reflection on the trip and the writing of the book made a big difference. In looking at America, he was looking at the future of France.”
Tocqueville was a product of the French Enlightenment thinkers—as was most of France during his lifetime. As intellectual as Tocqueville was, however, he believed being an intellectual was not enough. He desired to put his democratic theories to work in the arena of politics.
“Eighteenth century philosophers were not interested, and Tocqueville pointed this out time and again, in playing a political role directly,” Zunz noted. “They weren’t interested in the work of reform. They created huge intellectual systems that were hugely influential, but had no connection with practical politics. Tocqueville wanted to inform political theory with practical politics and vice versa. He thought he had it in him to create an original fusion between the two.
“He was a man of one idea. In the ideal world, equality and liberty are the same thing. Because if you are everybody’s equal, you are completely free, and if you are completely free, you are everybody’s equal. In the real world, unfortunately, too many people prefer equality and are willing to give up their political liberty to keep it, hence their submission to some despotic regime. Tocqueville’s life work was to put an end to that.”
Tocqueville got his chance when he won election in 1839. Less than a decade later, however, revolution hit France again. The Revolution of 1848 forced the abdication of Louis-Philippe and resulted in the short-lived Second Republic, which dissolved with the Second Empire in 1852.
“Tocqueville thought the tragedy of French history was the idea that every reform movement fought in the name of liberty ended up in a form of despotism,” Zunz stated. “It was sort of a French malady.”
The continual political upheaval in France only furthered Tocqueville’s resolve in democracy, specifically the republican form established in America. Cycling through revolutionary republics, constitutional monarchies, and absolute monarchies proved to the French statesman that a government that provided both equality and liberty would require a separation of powers.
“America had shown that the only way to retain liberty was partly to restrict it through the separation of powers,” Zunz said.
The malady, in a sense, has continued in France well after the death of Tocqueville in 1859. France’s government is called the Fifth Republic, which began in 1958. There was the threat of a Sixth in 2017. America, on the other hand, has retained its republican form of government over the centuries, undergirded by history’s longest lasting constitution.
America and France, however, retain close ties in many respects because of military outbursts such as the Napoleonic Wars, which resulted in the Louisiana Purchase, as well as America coming to the defense of France during World War I and II. Tocqueville, however, remains a primary connector between the two countries on a political and social level.
“He wrote a book that changed the way America and the rest of the world thinks about civil society and politics,” Zunz stated. “Not a bad achievement.”
