American Institutions And Their Influence

A >> Alexis de Tocqueville >> American Institutions And Their Influence

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49

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.

] The Europeans produced no great impression when they landed
upon the shores of North America: their presence engendered
neither envy nor fear. What influence could they possess over
such men as we have described? The Indian could live without
wants, suffer without complaint, and pour out his death-song at
the stake.[Footnote:

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.

] Like all the other members of the great human family, these
savages believed in the existence of a better world, and adored,
under different names, God, the Creator of the universe. Their
notions on the great intellectual truths were, in general, simple
and philosophical.[Footnote:

See Appendix D.

]

Although we have here traced the character of a primitive people,
yet it cannot be doubted that another people, more civilized and
more advanced in all respects, had preceded it in the same
regions.

An obscure tradition, which prevailed among the Indians to the
north of the Atlantic, informs us that these very tribes formerly
dwelt on the west side of the Mississippi. Along the banks of
the Ohio, and throughout the central valley, there are frequently
found, at this day, _tumuli_ raised by the hands of men. On
exploring these heaps of earth to their centre, it is usual to
meet with human bones, strange instruments, arms and utensils of
all kinds, made of a metal, or destined for purposes, unknown to
the present race.

The Indians of our time are unable to give any information
relative to the history of this unknown people. Neither did
those who lived three hundred years ago, when America was first
discovered, leave any accounts from which even an hypothesis
could be formed. Tradition--that perishable, yet ever-renewed
monument of the pristine world--throws no light upon the subject.
It is an undoubted fact, however, that in this part of the globe
thousands of our fellow-beings had lived. When they came hither,
what was their origin, their destiny, their history, and how they
perished, no one can tell.

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.

* * * * *

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 phisiognomy 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[Footnote:

The charter granted by the crown of England, in 1609, stipulated,
among other conditions, that the adventurers should pay to the
crown a fifth of the produce of all gold and silver mines. See
Marshall's "Life of Washington," vol. i., pp. 18-66.

] were seekers of gold, adventurers without resources and without
character, whose turbulent and restless spirits endangered the
infant colony,[Footnote:

A large portion of the adventurers, says Stith (History of
Virginia), were unprincipled young men of family, whom their
parents were glad to ship off, discharged servants, fraudulent
bankrupts, or debauchees: and others of the same class, people
more apt to pillage and destroy than to assist the settlement,
were the seditious chiefs who easily led this band into every
kind of extravagance and excess. See for the history of Virginia
the following works:--

"History of Virginia, from the first Settlements in the year
1624," by Smith.

"History of Virginia," by William Stith.

"History of Virginia, from the earliest Period," by Beverley.

] 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.[Footnote:

It was not till some time later that a certain number of rich
English capitalists came to fix themselves in the colony.

] No lofty conceptions, no intellectual system directed the
foundation of these new settlements. The colony was scarcely
established when slavery was introduced,[Footnote:

Slavery was introduced about the year 1620, by a Dutch vessel,
which landed twenty negroes on the banks of the river James. See
Chalmer.

] 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 manners 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.[Footnote:

The states of New England are those situated to the east of the
Hudson; they are now six in number: 1. Connecticut; 2. Rhode
Island; 3. Massachusetts; 4. Vermont; 5. New Hampshire; 6. Maine.

] 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,[Footnote:

"New England's Memorial," p. 13. Boston, 1826. See also
"Hutchinson's History," vol. ii., p. 440

] 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.[Footnote:

This rock is become an object of veneration in the United States.
I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns of
the Union. Does not this sufficiently show that all human power
and greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the
feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant, and this stone
becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation, its very dust
is shared as a relic; and what is become of the gateways of a
thousand palaces?

]

"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."