The first English-language edition published in 1838 and translated by Henry Reeve, Esq. with Preface and notes by John C. Spencer. This landmark work initiated a dialogue about the nature of democracy and the United States and its people that continues to this day. In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville [1805-1859] and Gustave de Beaumont [fl.1835] traveled through the United States on behalf of the French government to study American prisons, which were renowned for their progressive and humane methods. They were pleased to accept this assignment because they were intrigued by the idea of American democracy. Tocqueville and Beaumont spent nine months in the country, traveling as far west as Michigan and as far south as New Orleans. Throughout the tour, Tocqueville used his social connections to arrange meetings with several prominent and influential thinkers of the day. Tocqueville recorded his thoughts on the structure of the government and the judicial system, and commented on everyday people and the nation's political culture and social institutions. His observations on slavery, in particular, are impassioned and critical. These notes formed the basis of Democracy in America . Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was born in Verneuil, France. A historian and political scientist, he came to the United States in 1831 to report on the prison system. His experiences would later become the basis for his classic study Democracy in America . Democracy in America By Alexis de Tocqueville Lawbook Exchange Copyright © 2003 Alexis de Tocqueville All right reserved. ISBN: 9781584772491 Chapter One Physical Configuration of North America North America has striking geographical features which can be appreciated at first glance. Land and water, mountains and valleys, seem to have been separated with systematic method, and the simple majesty of this design stands out amid the confusion and immense variety of the scene. The continent is divided into two vast and almost equal regions. One region is bounded by the North Pole and the great oceans to east and west, while to the south it stretches down in an irregular triangle to the Great Lakes of Canada. The second starts where the other ends and covers the rest of the continent. One region slopes gently toward the pole, the other toward the equator. The second region is broken up more and is better suited as a permanent home for man. Two mountain chains run right across it; the Alleghenies parallel to the Atlantic, and the Rockies to the Pacific. The area between these two mountain chains is 1,341,649 miles, or about six times that of France. But the whole of this vast territory is a single valley sloping down from the smooth summits of the Alleghenies and stretching up to the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, with no obstacles in the way. An immense river flows along the bottom of this valley, and all the waters falling on the mountains on every side drain into it. Formerly the French called it the St. Louis River, in memory of their distant fatherland, and the Indians in their grandiloquent tongue named it the Father of Waters, the Mississippi. Sometimes gently flowing along the clay bed which nature has carved out for it, and sometimes swollen by storms, the Mississippi waters some twenty-five hundred miles. The valley watered by the Mississippi seems created for it alone; it dispenses good and evil at will like a local god. Near the river nature displays an inexhaustible fertility; the farther you go from its banks, the sparser the vegetation and the poorer becomes the soil. Nowhere have the great convulsions of the world left more evident traces than in the valley of the Mississippi. The whole countryside bears witness to the waters' work. Its sterility as well as its abundance is their work. Deep layers of fertile soil accumulated under the primeval ocean and had time to level out. On the right bank of the river there are huge plains as level as a rolled lawn. But nearer the mountains the land becomes more and more uneven and sterile; the soil is punctured in a thousand places by primitive rocks sticking out here and there like the bones of a skeleton when sinews and flesh have perished. All things considered, the valley of the Mississippi is the most magnificent habitation ever prepared by God for man, and yet one may say that it is still only a vast wilderness. On the eastern slopes of the Alleghenies, between the mountains and the Atlantic, there is a long strip of rock and sand which seems to have been left behind by the retreating ocean. This strip is only 48 leagues broad on the average, 1 390 leagues long. 2 The soil in this part of the American continent can be cultivated only with difficulty. That inhospital shore was the cradle of those English colonies which were one day to become the United States of America. The center of power still remains there, while in the land behind them are assembling, almost in secret, the real elements of the great