James T. Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Foreword by George W. Pierson (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000)

Excerpt:

Alexis de Tocqueville’s first journey to America ended on 20 February 1832, when the Havre sailed from New York for France. But his nine-month visit had been only a preface to a second voyage that would consume the next eight years: the writing of the Democracy in America. Until now, the story of that mental return to America, that lengthy time of reconsideration and introspection, has remained largely unexplored.

For the undertaking of such a project, most of the necessary materials are readily available. The Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts Collection, housed at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and sum of the successful collecting efforts of Paul Lambert White, John M. S. Allison, and, especially, of George Wilson Pierson, contains the bulk of letters, notes, outlines, drafts, and other papers relating to the young Frenchman’s work on America. Even the original working manuscript in Tocqueville’s own hand is included among the Yale materials. The collection offers, in short, an invaluable opportunity for a detailed retracing of the gestation and final shaping of Tocqueville’s classic work.

The accessibility of the original documents and working papers solves only one of the difficulties presented by any attempt to reconstruct the growth of Tocqueville’s book. Beyond the mechanics of his writing process, his sources, his ideas, and his methods must all be reconsidered.

Scholars have long been aware that the ingredients that went into the making of the Democracy were numerous and diverse. The book owed something to the influence of Tocqueville’s milieu, particularly the intellectual and political setting of early nineteenth-century France. It showed the marks of Tocqueville’s early life and education. It was based on the intense firsthand experience that he and Gustave de Beaumont had had of Jacksonian America. It drew also on the letters and essays of helpful American and European acquaintances; a long list of printed materials; the opinions and criticisms of family and friends who read early drafts; his experiences in France while writing the Democracy; and his personal beliefs, doubts, and ambitions. Yet the tale of the Democracy’s making demands a general reevaluation of these sources and raises several more specific questions as well. When and how did particular men, books, or events affect the Democracy? Were Tocqueville’s readings and conversations on various topics adequate? How did he reconcile conflicting opinions and information? Which sources were ultimately most important? Do his drafts or working manuscripts reveal any new and unsuspected roots?

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