preview

Essay on Democracy in America

Satisfactory Essays

Democracy in America
By: Alexis De Tocqueville

Democracy in America, by Alexis De Tocqueville is a book about how the American States and the federal government would grow politically and socially under the umbrella of democracy. Alexis De Tocqueville sees the United States as a unique entity because of how and why it started as well as its geographical location. Alexis De Tocqueville explains that the foundations of the democratic process in America are completely different from anywhere else on the globe.
The people who came to America were the oppressed and unhappy in England and all were trying to find a place where they could start anew and create a political structure that would facilitate an individual freedom unlike …show more content…

Another large influence was the lack of neighbors. America had no worries of guarding and protecting its borders because there was not anyone there who could pose a threat. They could put all of their energies toward the creation of their democracy. This democratic nation was to have no aristocracy and only one major division between its people, the North and the South. De Tocqueville saw two very different attitudes in these regions. The North and the South had conflicting views as to how they were going to advance themselves in the economic and political arenas. But the introduction of slavery into labor was the major conflict between the two. "Slavery…dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into a society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. The influence of slavery, united to the English character, explains the manners and the social condition of the Southern States." With the advent of slavery, the South was creating a class system among themselves that would not exist in the other regions of the States.
The few Southern founders were granted huge amounts of land with which to work, and instead of diving into the land themselves like the northerners did with their smaller pieces of land. They instead bought slaves and would eventually divide the country in a nasty dispute over their handling of affairs.
De Tocqueville has left no

Get Access