In Tocqueville’s second chapter he specifically talks about the creation of America, he says that is it is one of the few countries that we can trace and follow from the origin. He describes the new country as having two main regions, the North and the South. Whereas the North is inhabited by intellectual puritans who, “[did not] cross the Atlantic to improve their situation or to increase their wealth; it was purely intellectual craving that called them”. He also observed that the south was filled with men who had no morals and saw no law, they were there to create a fortune with gold. He witnessed that these men established slavery of the natives quickly after landing in Virginia. It is hard to tell where Tocqueville stands on the origin of America’s democracy. As talked about in class, he lists the advantages and disadvantages of both democracy and aristocracy in his works, yet when he is talking about the settlers who ‘left’ the safety of aristocracy, he shows the new way of democracy/leadership by the people as an unstable mess. I found these readings very interesting because they challenged my previous understandings of Tocqueville’s writing. He seems to be less open minded here then he is in later chapters, even though he is still unbiased towards both systems.
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