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

I have already explained the influence which slavery has exerted
upon the commercial ability of the Americans in the south; and
this same influence equally extends to their manners. The slave
is a servant who never remonstrates, and who submits to
everything without complaint. He may sometimes assassinate, but
he never withstands, his master. In the south there are no
families so poor as not to have slaves. The citizen of the
southern states of the Union is invested with a sort of domestic
dictatorship from his earliest years; the first notion he
acquires in life is, that he is born to command, and the first
habit he contracts is that of being obeyed without resistance.
His education tends, then, to give him the character of a
supercilious and a hasty man; irascible, violent, and ardent in
his desires, impatient of obstacles, but easily discouraged if he
cannot succeed upon his first attempt.

The American of the northern states is surrounded by no slaves in
his childhood; he is even unattended by free servants; and is
usually obliged to provide for his own wants. No sooner does he
enter the world than the idea of necessity assails him on every
side; he soon learns to know exactly the natural limits of his
authority; he never expects to subdue those who withstand him, by
force; and he knows that the surest means of obtaining the
support of his fellow-creatures, is to win their favor. He
therefore becomes patient, reflecting, tolerant, slow to act, and
persevering in his designs.

In the southern states the more immediate wants of life are
always supplied; the inhabitants of those parts are not busied in
the material cares of life, which are always provided for by
others; and their imagination is diverted to more captivating and
less definite objects. The American of the south is fond of
grandeur, luxury, and renown, of gaiety, of pleasure, and above
all, of idleness; nothing obliges him to exert himself in order
to subsist; and as he has no necessary occupations, he gives way
to indolence, and does not even attempt what would be useful.

But the equality of fortunes, and the absence of slavery in the
north, plunge the inhabitants in those same cares of daily life
which are disdained by the white population of the south. They
are taught from infancy to combat want, and to place comfort
above all the pleasures of the intellect or the heart. The
imagination is extinguished by the trivial details of life; and
the ideas become less numerous and less general, but far more
practical and more precise. As prosperity is the sole aim of
exertion, it is excellently well attained; nature and mankind are
turned to the best pecuniary advantage; and society is
dexterously made to contribute to the welfare of each of its
members, while individual egotism is the source of general
happiness.

The citizen of the north has not only experience, but knowledge:
nevertheless, he sets but little value upon the pleasures of
knowledge; he esteems it as the means of obtaining a certain end,
and he is only anxious to seize its more lucrative applications.
The citizen of the south is more given to act upon impulse; he is
more clever, more frank, more generous, more intellectual, and
more brilliant. The former, with a greater degree of activity,
of common sense, of information, and of general aptitude, has the
characteristic good and evil qualities of the middle classes.
The latter has the tastes, the prejudices, the weaknesses, and
the magnanimity of all aristocracies.

If two men are united in society, who have the same interests,
and to a certain extent the same opinions, but different
characters, different acquirements, and a different style of
civilisation, it is probable that these men will not agree. The
same remark is applicable to a society of nations.

Slavery then does not attack the American Union directly in its
interests, but indirectly in its manners.

The states which gave their assent to the federal contract in
1790 were thirteen in number; the Union now consists of
twenty-four members. The population which amounted to nearly
four millions in 1790, had more than tripled in the space of
forty years; and in 1830 it amounted to nearly thirteen
millions.[Footnote:

Census of 1790........ 3,929,328.
do 1830........12,856,165.
[do. 1840........17,068,666.]

] Changes of such magnitude cannot take place without some
danger.

A society of nations, as well as a society of individuals, derive
its principal chances of duration from the wisdom of its members,
their individual weakness, and their limited number. The
Americans who quit the coasts of the Atlantic ocean to plunge
into the western wilderness, are adventurers impatient of
restraint, greedy of wealth, and frequently men expelled from the
states in which they were born. When they arrive in the deserts,
they are unknown to each other; and they have neither traditions,
family feeling, nor the force of example to check their excesses.
The empire of the laws is feeble among them; that of morality is
still more powerless. The settlers who are constantly peopling
the valley of the Mississippi are, then, in every respect
inferior to the Americans who inhabit the older parts of the
Union. Nevertheless, they already exercise a great influence in
its councils; and they arrive at the government of the
commonwealth before they have learned to govern
themselves.[Footnote:

This indeed is only a temporary danger. I have no doubt that in
time society will assume as much stability and regularity in the
west, as it has already done upon the coast of the Atlantic
ocean.

]

The greater the individual weakness of each of the contracting
parties, the greater are the chances of the duration of the
contract; for their safety is then dependant upon their union.
When, in 1790, the most populous of the American republics did
not contain 500,000 inhabitants,[Footnote:

Pennsylvania contained 431,373 inhabitants in 1790.

] each of them felt its own insignificance as an independent
people, and this feeling rendered compliance with the federal
authority more easy. But when one of the confederate states
reckons, like the State of New York, two millions of inhabitants,
and covers an extent of territory equal in surface to a quarter
of France,[Footnote:

The area of the state of New York is about 46,000 square miles.
See Carey & Lea's American Geography, p. 142.

] it feels its own strength; and although it may continue to
support the Union as advantageous to its prosperity, it no longer
regards that body as necessary to its existence; and, as it
continues to belong to the federal compact, it soon aims at
preponderance in the federal assemblies. The probable unanimity
of the states is diminished as their number increases. At
present the interests of the different parts of the Union are not
at variance; but who is able to foresee the multifarious changes
of the future, in a country in which towns are founded from day
to day, and states almost from year to year?

Since the first settlement of the British colonies, the number of
inhabitants has about doubled every twenty-two years. I perceive
no causes which are likely to check this progressive increase of
the Anglo-American population for the next hundred years; and
before that space of time has elapsed, I believe that the
territories and dependencies of the United States will be covered
by more than a hundred millions of inhabitants, and divided into
forty states.[Footnote:

If the population continues to double every twenty-two years, as
it has done for the last two hundred years, the number of
inhabitants in the United States in 1852, will be twenty
millions: in 1874, forty-eight millions; and in 1896, ninety-six
millions. This may still be the case even if the lands on the
western slope of the Rocky mountains should be found to be unfit
for cultivation. The territory which is already occupied can
easily contain this number of inhabitants. One hundred millions
of men disseminated over the surface of the twenty-four states,
and the three dependencies, which constitute the Union, would
give only 702 inhabitants to the square league: this would he far
below the mean population of France, which is 1,003 to the square
league; or of England, which is 1,457; and it would even be below
the population of Switzerland, for that country, notwithstanding
its lakes and mountains, contains 783 inhabitants to the square
league (See Maltebrun, vol. vi., p. 92.)

] I admit that these hundred millions of men have no hostile
interests; I suppose, on the contrary, that they are all equally
interested in the maintenance of the Union; but I am still of
opinion, that where there are a hundred millions of men, and
forty distinct nations unequally strong, the continuance of the
federal government can only be a fortunate accident.

Whatever faith I may have in the perfectibility of man until
human nature is altered, and men wholly transformed, I shall
refuse to believe in the duration of a government which is called
upon to hold together forty different peoples, disseminated over
a territory equal to one-half of Europe in extent; to avoid all
rivalry, ambition, and struggles, between them; and to direct
their independent activity to the accomplishment of the same
designs.

But the greatest peril to which the Union is exposed by its
increase, arises from the continual changes which take place in
the position of its internal strength. The distance from Lake
Superior to the gulf of Mexico extends from the 47th to the 30th
degree of latitude, a distance of more than twelve hundred miles,
as the bird flies. The frontier of the United States winds along
the whole of this immense line; sometimes falling within its
limits, but more frequently extending far beyond it, into the
waste. It has been calculated that the whites advance a mean
distance of seventeen miles along the whole of this vast
boundary.[Footnote:

See Legislative Documents, 20th congress, No 117, p. 105.

] Obstacles, such as an unproductive district, a lake, or an
Indian nation unexpectedly encountered, are sometimes met with.
The advancing column then halts for a while; its two extremities
fall back upon themselves, and as soon as they are reunited they
proceed onward. This gradual and continuous progress of the
European race toward the Rocky mountains, has the solemnity of a
providential event; it is like a deluge of men rising unabatedly,
and daily driven onward by the hand of God.

Within this first line of conquering settlers, towns are built,
and vast states founded. In 1790 there were only a few thousand
pioneers sprinkled along the valleys of the Mississippi; and at
the present day these valleys contain as many inhabitants as were
to be found in the whole Union in 1790. Their population amounts
to nearly four millions.[Footnote:

3,672,317; census 1830.

] The city of Washington was founded in 1800, in the very centre
of the Union; but such are the changes which have taken place,
that it now stands at one of the extremities; and the delegates
of the most remote western states are already obliged to perform
a journey as long as that from Vienna to Paris.[Footnote:

The distance of Jefferson, the capital of the state of Missouri,
to Washington, is 1,018 miles. (American Almanac, 1831, p. 40.)

]

All the states are borne onward at the same time in the path of
fortune, but of course they do not all increase and prosper in
the same proportion. In the north of the Union detached branches
of the Allegany chain, extending as far as the Atlantic ocean,
form spacious roads and ports, which are constantly accessible to
vessels of the greatest burden. But from the Potomac to the
mouth of the Mississippi, the coast is sandy and flat. In this
part of the Union the mouths of almost all the rivers are
obstructed; and the few harbors which exist among these lagunes,
afford much shallower water to vessels, and much fewer commercial
advantages than those of the north.

This first natural cause of inferiority is united to another
cause proceeding from the laws. We have already seen that
slavery, which is abolished in the north, still exists in the
south; and I have pointed out its fatal consequences upon the
prosperity of the planter himself.

The north is therefore superior to the south both in
commerce[Footnote:

The following statements will suffice to show the difference
which exists between the commerce of the south and that of the
north:--

In 1829, the tonnage of all the merchant-vessels belonging to
Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia (the four great southern
states), amounted to only 5,243 tons. In the same year the
tonnage of the vessels of the state of Massachusetts alone
amounted to 17,322 tons (See Legislative Documents, 21st
congress, 2d session, No. 140, p. 244.) Thus the state of
Massachusetts has three times as much shipping as the four
abovementioned states. Nevertheless the area of the state of
Massachusetts is only 7,335 square miles, and its population
amounts to 610,014 inhabitants; while the area of the four other
states I have quoted is 210,000 square miles, and their
population 3,047,767. Thus the area of the state of
Massachusetts forms only one thirtieth part of the area of the
four states; and its population is five times smaller than
theirs. (See Darby's View of the United States.) Slavery is
prejudicial to the commercial prosperity of the south in several
different ways; by diminishing the spirit of enterprise among the
whites, and by preventing them from meeting with as numerous a
class of sailors as they require. Sailors are generally taken
from the lowest ranks of the population. But in the southern
states these lowest ranks are composed of slaves, and it is very
difficult to employ them at sea. They are unable to serve as
well as a white crew, and apprehensions would always be
entertained of their mutinying in the middle of the ocean, or of
their escaping in the foreign countries at which they might
touch.

] and manufacture; the natural consequence of which is the more
rapid increase of population and of wealth within its borders.
The states situated upon the shores of the Atlantic ocean are
already half-peopled. Most of the land is held by an owner; and
these districts cannot therefore receive so many emigrants as the
western states, where a boundless field is still open to their
exertions. The valley of the Mississippi is far more fertile
than the coast of the Atlantic ocean. This reason, added to all
the others, contributes to drive the Europeans westward--a fact
which may be rigorously demonstrated by figures. It is found
that the sum total of the population of all the United States has
about tripled in the course of forty years. But in the recent
states adjacent to the Mississippi, the population has increased
thirty-one fold within the same space of time.[Footnote:

Darby's view of the United States, p. 444.

]

The relative position of the central federal power is continually
displaced. Forty years ago the majority of the citizens of the
Union was established upon the coast of the Atlantic, in the
environs of the spot upon which Washington now stands; but the
great body of the people is now advancing inland and to the
north, so that in twenty years the majority will unquestionably
be on the western side of the Alleganies. If the Union goes on
to subsist, the basin of the Mississippi is evidently marked out,
by its fertility and its extent, as the future centre of the
federal government. In thirty or forty years, that tract of
country will have assumed the rank which naturally belongs to it.
It is easy to calculate that its population, compared to that of
the coast of the Atlantic, will be, in round numbers, as 40 to
11. In a few years the states which founded the Union will lose
the direction of its policy, and the population of the valleys of
the Mississippi will preponderate in the federal assemblies.

This constant gravitation of the federal power and influence
toward the northwest, is shown every ten years, when a general
census of the population is made, and the number of delegates
which each state sends to congress is settled afresh.[Footnote:

It may be seen that in the course of the last ten years
(1820-'30) the population of one district, as for instance, the
state of Delaware, has increased in the proportion of 5 per
cent.; while that of another, as the territory of Michigan, has
increased 250 per cent. Thus the population of Virginia has
augmented 13 per cent., and that of the border state of Ohio 61
per cent., in the same space of time. The general table of these
changes, which is given in the National Calendar, displays a
striking picture of the unequal fortunes of the different states.

] In 1790 Virginia had nineteen representatives in congress.
This number continued to increase until the year 1813, when it
reached to twenty-three: from that time it began to decrease, and
in 1833, Virginia elected only twenty-one representatives.
[Footnote:

It has just been said that in the course of the last term the
population of Virginia has increased 13 per cent.; and it is
necessary to explain how the number of representatives of a state
may decrease, when the population of that state, far from
diminishing, is actually upon the increase. I take the state of
Virginia, to which I have already alluded, as my term of
comparison. The number of representatives of Virginia in 1823
was proportionate to the total number of the representatives of
the Union, and to the relation which its population bore to that
of the whole Union; in 1833, the number of representatives of
Virginia was likewise proportionate to the total number of the
representatives of the Union, and to the relation which its
population, augmented in the course of ten years, bore to the
augmented population of the Union in the same space of time. The
new number of Virginian representatives will then be to the old
number, on the one hand, as the new number of all the
representatives is to the old number; and, on the other hand, as
the augmentation of the population of Virginia is to that of the
whole population of the country. Thus, if the increase of the
population of the lesser country be to that of the greater in an
exact inverse ratio of the proportion between the new and the old
numbers of all the representatives, the number of representatives
of Virginia will remain stationary; and if the increase of the
Virginian population be to that of the whole Union in a feebler
ratio than the new number of representatives of the Union to the
old number, the number of the representatives of Virginia must
decrease.

] During the same period the state of New York advanced in the
contrary direction; in 1790, it had ten representatives in
congress; in 1813, twenty-seven; in 1823, thirty-four; and in
1833, forty. The state of Ohio had only one representative in
1803, and in 1833, it had already nineteen.

It is difficult to imagine a durable union of a people which is
rich and strong, with one which is poor and weak, and if it were
proved that the strength and wealth of the one are not the causes
of the weakness and poverty of the other. But union is still
move difficult to maintain at a time at which one party is losing
strength, and the other is gaining it. This rapid and
disproportionate increase of certain states threatens the
independence of the others. New York might, perhaps, succeed
with its two millions of inhabitants and its forty
representatives, in dictating to the other states in congress.
But even if the more powerful states make no attempt to bear down
the lesser ones, the danger still exists; for there is almost as
much in the possibility of the act as in the act itself. The
weak generally mistrusts the justice and the reason of the
strong. The states which increase less rapidly than the others,
look upon those which are more favored by fortune, with envy and
suspicion. Hence arise the deep-seated uneasiness and
ill-defined agitation which are observable in the south, and
which form so striking a contrast to the confidence and
prosperity which are common to other parts of the Union. I am
inclined to think that the hostile measures taken by the southern
provinces upon a recent occasion, are attributable to no other
cause. The inhabitants of the southern states are, of all the
Americans, those who are most interested in the maintenance of
the Union; they would assuredly suffer most from being left to
themselves; and yet they are the only citizens who threaten to
break the tie of confederation. But it is easy to perceive that
the south, which has given four presidents, Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, to the Union; which perceives
that it is losing its federal influence, and that the number of
its representatives in congress is diminishing from year to year
while those of the northern and western states are increasing;
the south, which is peopled with ardent and irascible beings, is
becoming more and more irritated and alarmed. The citizens
reflect upon their present position and remember their past
influence, with the melancholy uneasiness of men who suspect
oppression: if they discover a law of the Union which is not
unequivocally favorable to their interests, they protest against
it as an abuse of force; and if their ardent remonstrances are
not listened to, they threaten to quit an association which loads
them with burdens while it deprives them of their due profits.
"The tariff," said the inhabitants of Carolina in 1832, "enriches
the north, and ruins the south; for if this were not the case, to
what can we attribute the continually increasing power and wealth
of the north, with its inclement skies and arid soil; while the
south, which may be styled the garden of America, is rapidly
declining."[Footnote:

See the report of its committees to the convention, which
proclaimed the nullification of the tariff in South Carolina.

]

If the changes which I have described were gradual, so that each
generation at least might have time to disappear with the order
of things under which it had lived, the danger would be less: but
the progress of society in America is precipitate, and almost
revolutionary. The same citizen may have lived to see his state
take the lead in the Union, and afterward become powerless in the
federal assemblies; and an Anglo-American republic has been known
to grow as rapidly as a man, passing from birth and infancy to
maturity in the course of thirty years. It must not be imagined,
however, that the states which lose their preponderance, also
lose their population or their riches; no stop is put to their
prosperity, and they even go on to increase more rapidly than any
kingdom in Europe.[Footnote:

The population of a country assuredly constitutes the first
element of its wealth. In the ten years (1820-'30) during which
Virginia lost two of its representatives in congress, its
population increased in the proportion of 13-7 per cent.; that of
Carolina in the proportion of 15 per cent.; and that of Georgia
51-5 per cent. (See the American Almanac, 1832, p. 162.) But
the population of Russia, which increases more rapidly than that
of any other European country, only augments in ten years at the
rate of 9-5 per cent.; of France at the rate of 7 per cent.; and
of Europe in general at the rate of 4-7 per cent. (See
Maltebrun, vol. vi., p. 95.)

] But they believe themselves to be impoverished because their
wealth does not augment as rapidly as that of their neighbors;
and they think that their power is lost, because they suddenly
come into collision with a power greater than their
own.[Footnote:

It must be admitted, however, that the depreciation which has
taken place in the value of tobacco, during the last fifty years,
has notably diminished the opulence of the southern planters; but
this circumstance is as independent of the will of their northern
brethren, as it is of their own.

] Thus they are more hurt in their feelings and their passions,
than in their interests. But this is amply sufficient to
endanger the maintenance of the Union. If kings and peoples had
only had their true interests in view, ever since the beginning
of the world, the name of war would scarcely be known among
mankind.

Thus the prosperity of the United States is the source of the
most serious dangers that threaten them, since it tends to create
in some of the confederate states that over-excitement which
accompanies a rapid increase of fortune; and to awaken in others
those feelings of envy, mistrust, and regret, which usually
attend upon the loss of it. The Americans contemplate this
extraordinary and hasty progress with exultation; but they would
be wiser to consider it with sorrow and alarm. The Americans of
the United States must inevitably become one of the greatest
nations in the world; their offset will cover almost the whole of
North America; the continent which they inhabit is their
dominion, and it cannot escape them. What urges them to take
possession of it so soon? Riches, power, and renown, cannot fail
to be theirs at some future time; but they rush upon their
fortune as if but a moment remained for them to make it their
own.