Read onlineDemocracy In America, vol 1
The primary focus of Democracy in America is an analysis of why republican representative democracy has succeeded in the United States when it failed in so many other places. Tocqueville also speculates on the future of democracy in the United States, discussing both possible threats to democracy and possible dangers of democracy, including his belief that democracy has a tendency to degenerate into what he calls ''mild despotism.'' He also observed that the strong role religion played in the United States was due to its separation from the government, a separation all parties found agreeable. Translated by Henry Reeve
would be impracticable in any different country, or among any different people.
The pride and comfort that the American people enjoy in the great commentaries of De Tocqueville are far removed from the selfish adulation that comes from a great and singular success. It is the consciousness of victory over a false theory of government which has afflicted mankind for many ages, that gives joy to the true American, as it did to De Tocqueville in his great triumph.
When De Tocqueville wrote, we had lived less than fifty years under our Constitution. In that time no great national commotion had occurred that tested its strength, or its power of resistance to internal strife, such as had converted his beloved France into fields of slaughter torn by tempests of wrath.
He had a strong conviction that no government could be ordained that could resist these internal forces, when, they are directed to its destruction by bad men, or unreasoning mobs, and many then believed, as some yet believe, that our gover