American Institutions and Their Influence by Alexis de Tocqueville et al

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How strange does it appear that nations have existed, and afterward so
completely disappeared from the earth, that the remembrance of their
very name is effaced: their languages are lost; their glory is vanished
like a sound without an echo; but perhaps there is not one which has not
left behind it a tomb in memory of its passage. The most durable
monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and
nothingness of man.

Although the vast country which we have been describing was inhabited by
many indigenous tribes, it may justly be said, at the time of its
discovery by Europeans, to have formed one great desert. The Indians
occupied, without possessing it. It is by agricultural labor that man
appropriates the soil, and the early inhabitants of North America lived
by the produce of the chase. Their implacable prejudices, their
uncontrolled passions, their vices, and still more, perhaps, their
savage virtues, consigned them to inevitable destruction. The ruin of
these nations began from the day when Europeans landed on their shores:
it has proceeded ever since, and we are now seeing the completion of it.
They seemed to have been placed by Providence amid the riches of the New
World to enjoy them for a season, and then surrender them. Those coasts,
so admirably adapted for commerce and industry; those wide and deep
rivers; that inexhaustible valley of the Mississippi; the whole
continent, in short, seemed prepared to be the abode of a great nation,
yet unborn.

In that land the great experiment was to be made by civilized man, of
the attempt to construct society upon a new basis; and it was there, for
the first time, that theories hitherto unknown, or deemed impracticable,
were to exhibit a spectacle for which the world had not been prepared by
the history of the past.

* * * * *

Notes:

[3] Darby's "View of the United States."

[4] Mackenzie's river.

[5] Warden's "Description of the United States."

[6] See Appendix A.

[7] Malte Brun tells us (vol. v., p. 726) that the water of the
Caribbean sea is so transparent, that corals and fish are discernible at
a depth of sixty fathoms. The ship seemed to float in the air, the
navigator became giddy as his eye penetrated through the crystal flood,
and beheld submarine gardens, or beds of shells, or gilded fishes
gliding among tufts and thickets of seaweed.

[8] See Appendix B.

[9] With the progress of discovery, some resemblance has been found to
exist between the physical conformation, the language, and the habits of
the Indians of North America, and those of the Tongous, Mantchous,
Moguls, Tartars, and other wandering tribes of Asia. The land occupied
by these tribes is not very distant from Behring's strait; which allows
of the supposition, that at a remote period they gave inhabitants to the
desert continent of America. But this is a point which has not yet been
clearly elucidated by science. See Malte Brun, vol. v.; the works of
Humboldt; Fischer, "Conjecture sur l'Origine des Américains;" Adair,
"History of the American Indians."

[10] See Appendix C.

[11] We learn from President Jefferson's "Notes upon Virginia," p. 148,
that among the Iroquois, when attacked by a superior force, aged men
refused to fly, or to survive the destruction of their country; and they
braved death like the ancient Romans when their capital was sacked by
the Gauls. Further on, p. 150, he tells us, that there is no example of
an Indian, who, having fallen into the hands of his enemies, begged for
his life; on the contrary, the captive sought to obtain death at the
hands of his conquerors by the use of insult and provocation.

[12] See "Histoire de la Louisiane," by Lepage Dupratz; Charlevoix,
"Histoire de la Nouvelle France;" "Lettres du Rev. G. Hecwelder;"
"Transactions of the American Philosophical Society," v. i.; Jefferson's
"Notes on Virginia," pp. 135-190. What is said by Jefferson is of
especial weight, on account of the personal merit of the writer, and of
the matter-of-fact age in which he lived.

[13] See Appendix D.

CHAPTER II.

ORIGIN OF THE ANGLO-AMERICANS AND ITS IMPORTANCE, IN RELATION TO THEIR
FUTURE CONDITION.

Utility of knowing the Origin of Nations in order to understand their
social Condition and their Laws.--America the only Country in which the
Starting-Point of a great People has been clearly observable.--In what
respects all who emigrated to British America were similar.--In what
they differed.--Remark applicable to all the Europeans who established
themselves on the shores of the New World.--Colonization of Virginia.--
Colonization of New England.--Original Character of the first
inhabitants of New England.--Their Arrival.--Their first Laws.--Their
social Contract.--Penal Code borrowed from the Hebrew Legislation.--
Religious Fervor.--Republican Spirit.--Intimate Union of the Spirit of
Religion with the Spirit of Liberty.

After the birth of a human being, his early years are obscurely spent in
the toils or pleasures of childhood. As he grows up, the world receives
him, when his manhood begins, and he enters into contact with his
fellows. He is then studied for the first time, and it is imagined that
the germe of the vices and the virtues of his maturer years is then
formed.

This, if I am not mistaken, is a great error. We must begin higher up;
we must watch the infant in his mother's arms; we must see the first
images which the external world casts upon the dark mirror of his mind;
the first occurrences which he beholds; we must hear the first words
which awaken the sleeping powers of thought, and stand by his earliest
efforts, if we would understand the prejudices, the habits, and the
passions, which will rule his life. The entire man is, so to speak, to
be seen in the cradle of the child.

The growth of nations presents something analogous to this; they all
bear some marks of their origin; and the circumstances which accompanied
their birth and contributed to their rise, affect the whole term of
their being.

If we were able to go back to the elements of states, and to examine the
oldest monuments of their history, I doubt not that we should discover
the primary cause of the prejudices, the habits, the ruling passions,
and in short of all that constitutes what is called the national
character: we should then find the explanation of certain customs which
now seem at variance with prevailing manners, of such laws as conflict
with established principles, and of such incoherent opinions as are here
and there to be met with in society, like those fragments of broken
chains which we sometimes see hanging from the vault of an edifice, and
supporting nothing. This might explain the destinies of certain nations
which seem borne along by an unknown force to ends of which they
themselves are ignorant. But hitherto facts have been wanting to
researches of this kind: the spirit of inquiry has only come upon
communities in their latter days; and when they at length turned their
attention to contemplate their origin, time had already obscured it, or
ignorance and pride adorned it with truth-concealing fables.

America is the only country in which it has been possible to study the
natural and tranquil growth of society, and where the influence
exercised on the future condition of states by their origin is clearly
distinguishable.

At the period when the people of Europe landed in the New World, their
national characteristics were already completely formed; each of them
had a physiognomy of its own; and as they had already attained that
stage of civilisation at which men are led to study themselves, they
have transmitted to us a faithful picture of their opinions, their
manners, and their laws. The men of the sixteenth century are almost as
well known to us as our contemporaries. America consequently exhibits in
the broad light of day the phenomena which the ignorance or rudeness of
earlier ages conceals from our researches. Near enough to the time when
the states of America were founded to be accurately acquainted with
their elements, and sufficiently removed from that period to judge of
some of their results. The men of our own day seem destined to see
farther than their predecessors into the series of human events.
Providence has given us a torch which our forefathers did not possess,
and has allowed us to discern fundamental causes in the history of the
world which the obscurity of the past concealed from them.

If we carefully examine the social and political state of America, after
having studied its history, we shall remain perfectly convinced that not
an opinion, not a custom, not a law, I may even say not an event, is
upon record which the origin of that people will not explain. The
readers of this book will find the germe of all that is to follow in the
present chapter, and the key to almost the whole work.

The emigrants who came at different periods to occupy the territory now
covered by the American Union, differed from each other in many
respects; their aim was not the same, and they governed themselves on
different principles.

These men had, however, certain features in common, and they were all
placed in an analogous situation. The tie of language is perhaps the
strongest and most durable that can unite mankind. All the emigrants
spoke the same tongue; they were all offsets from the same people. Born
in a country which had been agitated for centuries by the struggles of
faction, and in which all parties had been obliged in their turn to
place themselves under the protection of the laws, their political
education had been perfected in this rude school, and they were more
conversant with the notions of right, and the principles of true
freedom, than the greater part of their European contemporaries. At the
period of the first emigrations, the parish system, that fruitful germe
of free institutions, was deeply rooted in the habits of the English;
and with it the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people had been
introduced even into the bosom of the monarchy of the house of Tudor.

The religious quarrels which have agitated the Christian world were then
rife. England had plunged into the new order of things with headlong
vehemence. The character of its inhabitants, which had always been
sedate and reflecting, became argumentative and austere. General
information had been increased by intellectual debate, and the mind had
received a deeper cultivation. While religion was the topic of
discussion, the morals of the people were reformed. All these national
features are more or less discoverable in the physiognomy of those
adventurers who came to seek a new home on the opposite shores of the
Atlantic.

Another remark, to which we shall hereafter have occasion to recur, is
applicable not only to the English, but to the French, the Spaniards,
and all the Europeans who successively established themselves in the New
World. All these European colonies contained the elements, if not the
development of a complete democracy. Two causes led to this result. It
may safely be advanced, that on leaving the mother-country the emigrants
had in general no notion of superiority over one another. The happy and
the powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of
equality among men than poverty and misfortune. It happened, however, on
several occasions that persons of rank were driven to America by
political and religious quarrels. Laws were made to establish a
gradation of ranks; but it was soon found that the soil of America was
entirely opposed to a territorial aristocracy. To bring that refractory
land into cultivation, the constant and interested exertions of the
owner himself were necessary; and when the ground was prepared, its
produce was found to be insufficient to enrich a master and a farmer at
the same time. The land was then naturally broken up into small
portions, which the proprietor cultivated for himself. Land is the basis
of an aristocracy, which clings to the soil that supports it; for it is
not by privileges alone, nor by birth, but by landed property handed
down from generation to generation, that an aristocracy is constituted.
A nation may present immense fortunes and extreme wretchedness; but
unless those fortunes are territorial, there is no aristocracy, but
simply the class of the rich and that of the poor.

All the British colonies had then a great degree of similarity at the
epoch of their settlement. All of them, from their first beginning,
seemed destined to behold the growth, not of the aristocratic liberty of
their mother-country, but of that freedom of the middle and lower orders
of which the history of the world has as yet furnished no complete
example.

In this general uniformity several striking differences were however
discernible, which it is necessary to point out. Two branches may be
distinguished in the Anglo-American family, which have hitherto grown up
without entirely commingling; the one in the south, the other in the
north.

Virginia received the first English colony; the emigrants took
possession of it in 1607. The idea that mines of gold and silver are the
sources of national wealth, was at that time singularly prevalent in
Europe; a fatal delusion, which has done more to impoverish the nations
which adopted it, and has cost more lives in America, than the united
influence of war and bad laws. The men sent to Virginia[14] were seekers
of gold, adventurers without resources and without character, whose
turbulent and restless spirits endangered the infant colony,[15] and
rendered its progress uncertain. The artisans and agriculturists arrived
afterward; and although they were a more moral and orderly race of men,
they were in nowise above the level of the inferior classes in
England.[16] No lofty conceptions, no intellectual system directed the
foundation of these new settlements. The colony was scarcely established
when slavery was introduced,[17] and this was the main circumstance
which has exercised so prodigious an influence on the character, the
laws, and all the future prospects of the south.

Slavery, as we shall afterward show, dishonors labor; it introduces
idleness into society, and, with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury
and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind, and benumbs the
activity of man. The influence of slavery, united to the English
character, explains the mariners and the social condition of the
southern states.

In the north, the same English foundation was modified by the most
opposite shades of character; and here I may be allowed to enter into
some details. The two or three main ideas which constitute the basis of
the social theory of the United States, were first combined in the
northern British colonies, more generally denominated the states of New
England.[18] The principles of New England spread at first to the
neighboring states; they then passed successively to the more distant
ones; and at length they embued the whole confederation. They now extend
their influence beyond its limits over the whole American world. The
civilisation of New England has been like a beacon lit upon a hill,
which, after it has diffused its warmth around, tinges the distant
horizon with its glow.

The foundation of New England was a novel spectacle, and all the
circumstances attending it were singular and original. The large
majority of colonies have been first inhabited either by men without
education and without resources, driven by their poverty and their
misconduct from the land which gave them birth, or by speculators and
adventurers greedy of gain. Some settlements cannot even boast so
honorable an origin: St. Domingo was founded by buccaneers; and, at the
present day, the criminal courts of England supply the population of
Australia.

The settlers who established themselves on the shores of New England all
belonged to the more independent classes of their native country. Their
union on the soil of America at once presented the singular phenomenon
of a society containing neither lords nor common people, neither rich
nor poor. These men possessed, in proportion to their number, a greater
mass of intelligence than is to be found in any European nation of our
own time. All, without a single exception, had received a good
education, and many of them were known in Europe for their talents and
their acquirements. The other colonies had been founded by adventurers
without family; the emigrants of New England brought with them the best
elements of order and morality, they landed in the desert accompanied by
their wives and children. But what most especially distinguished them
was the aim of their undertaking. They had not been obliged by necessity
to leave their country, the social position they abandoned was one to be
regretted, and their means of subsistence were certain. Nor did they
cross the Atlantic to improve their situation, or to increase their
wealth; the call which summoned them from the comforts of their homes
was purely intellectual; and in facing the inevitable sufferings of
exile, their object was the triumph of an idea.

The emigrants, or, as they deservedly styled themselves, the pilgrims,
belonged to that English sect, the austerity of whose principles had
acquired for them the name of puritans. Puritanism was not merely a
religious doctrine, but it corresponded in many points with the most
absolute democratic and republican theories. It was this tendency which
had aroused its most dangerous adversaries. Persecuted by the government
of the mother-country, and disgusted by the habits of a society opposed
to the rigor of their own principles, the puritans went forth to seek
some rude and unfrequented part of the world, where they could live
according to their own opinions, and worship God in freedom.

A few quotations will throw more light upon the spirit of these pious
adventurers than all we can say of them. Nathaniel Morton,[19] the
historian of the first years of the settlement, thus opens his
subject:--

"GENTLE READER: I have for some length of time looked upon it as a duty
incumbent, especially on the immediate successors of those that have had
so large experience of those many memorable and signal demonstrations of
God's goodness, viz., the first beginning of this plantation in New
England, to commit to writing his gracious dispensations on that behalf;
having so many inducements thereunto, not only otherwise, but so
plentifully in the Sacred Scriptures: that so, what we have seen, and
what our fathers have told us (Psalm lxxviii., 3, 4), we may not hide
from our children, showing to the generations to come the praises of the
Lord; that especially the seed of Abraham his servant, and the children
of Jacob his chosen (Psalm cv., 5, 6), may remember his marvellous works
in the beginning and progress of the planting of New England, his
wonders and the judgments of his mouth; how that God brought a vine into
this wilderness; that he cast out the heathen and planted it; that he
made room for it, and caused it to take deep root; and it filled the
land (Psalm lxxx., 8, 9). And not onely so, but also that he hath guided
his people by his strength to his holy habitation, and planted them in
the mountain of his inheritance in respect of precious gospel
enjoyments: and that as especially God may have the glory of all unto
whom it is most due; so also some rays of glory may reach the names of
those blessed saints, that were the main instruments and the beginning
of this happy enterprise."

It is impossible to read this opening paragraph without an involuntary
feeling of religious awe; it breathes the very savor of gospel
antiquity. The sincerity of the author heightens his power of language.
The band, which to his eyes was a mere party of adventurers, gone forth
to seek their fortune beyond the seas, appears to the reader as the
germe of a great nation wafted by Providence to a predestined shore.

The author thus continues his narrative of the departure of the first
pilgrims:--

"So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been
their resting-place for above eleven years; but they knew that they were
pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things,
but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God
hath prepared for them a city (Heb. xi., 16), and therein quieted their
spirits. When they came to Delfs-Haven they found the ship and all
things ready; and such of their friends as could come with them,
followed after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt,
and to take their leaves of them. One night was spent with little sleep
with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse,
and other real expressions of true Christian love. The next day they
went on board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the
sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and
prayers did sound among them; what tears did gush from every eye, and
pithy speeches pierced each other's heart, that sundry of the Dutch
strangers that stood on the key as spectators could not refrain from
tears. But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away that were
thus loath to depart, their reverend pastor falling down on his knees,
and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with most
fervent prayers unto the Lord and his blessing; and then, with mutual
embraces and many tears, they took their leaves one of another, which
proved to be the last leave to many of them."

The emigrants were about 150 in number, including the women and the
children. Their object was to plant a colony on the shores of the
Hudson; but after having been driven about for some time in the Atlantic
ocean, they were forced to land on that arid coast of New England which
is now the site of the town of Plymouth. The rock is still shown on
which the pilgrims disembarked.[20]

"But before we pass on," continues our historian, "let the reader with
me make a pause, and seriously consider this poor people's present
condition, the more to be raised up to admiration of God's goodness
toward them in their preservation: for being now passed the vast ocean,
and a sea of troubles before them in expectation, they had now no
friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no
houses, or much less towns to repair unto to seek for succor; and for
the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of the country
know them to be sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms,
dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search unknown coasts.
Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full
of wilde beasts, and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were,
they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save
upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in
respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand
in appearance with a weather-beaten face, and the whole country full of
woods and thickets represented a wild and savage hue; if they looked
behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed, and was
now as a main bar or gulph to separate them from all the civil parts of
the world."

It must not be imagined that the piety of the puritans was of a merely
speculative kind, or that it took no cognizance of the course of worldly
affairs. Puritanism, as I have already remarked, was scarcely less a
political than a religious doctrine. No sooner had the emigrants landed
on the barren coast, described by Nathaniel Morton, than their first
care was to constitute a society, by passing the following act:[21]--

"IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN! We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal
subjects of our dread sovereign lord King James, &c., &c., having
undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith,
and the honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first
colony in the northern parts of Virginia: do by these presents solemnly
and mutually, in the presence of God and one another, covenant and
combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better
ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid: and by
virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws,
ordinances, acts, constitutions, and officers, from time to time, as
shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the
colony: unto which we promise all due submission and obedience," &c.[22]

This happened in 1620, and from that time forward the emigration went
on. The religious and political passions which ravished the British
empire during the whole reign of Charles I., drove fresh crowds of
sectarians every year to the shores of America. In England the
stronghold of puritanism was in the middle classes, and it was from the
middle classes that the majority of the emigrants came. The population
of New England increased rapidly; and while the hierarchy of rank
despotically classed the inhabitants of the mother-country, the colony
continued to present the novel spectacle of a community homogeneous in
all its parts. A democracy, more perfect than any which antiquity had
dreamed of, started in full size and panoply from the midst of an
ancient feudal society.