Alexis de Tocqueville and changes in America
● In 1813, Tocqueville and Beaumont, 2 young French aristocrats on a mission to
find out more about the American republic, found themselves stuck in Memphis,
Tennessee because of the frozen Ohio River en route to New Orleans.
● On Christmas, the Frenchmen along with a federal agent accompanying relocating
Choctaw Natives persuaded the captain to turn the boat.
● Tocqueville wrote about the dispirited Natives, and later published the greatest
masterpiece of American history written by a foreigner in Democracy in America.
● Tocqueville had come at a time when America was quickly changing, with new
transportation, expansion west, new cities, and transforming social relationships.
● To Tocqueville, Americans main goal was to “become rich” and did not let much
tradition get in their way. He identified slavery as a block in American character.
Still, to Tocqueville, American whites were all animated by the goal of getting ahead.
Westward Expansion
● By 1840, 1/3 of all Americans would be living in the “West”.
● With more land available, the federal govt.’s brutal put down of Natives, and a boom
in agricultural prices after 1812, most migrants desired a better version of life than
in the East. Pioneers desired security, often migrating in families and to places
where they hoped to find familiar faces. (eg: created Vermontville in Michigan)
● Most settlers in the 1820s settled near rivers, as they depended on the
transportation system of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Later, in the 1830s and
40s, the spread of canals would allow them to venture farther from rivers.
● Western society was characterized by group activities.
● Before 1840, few westerners could afford elegant living and believed they had the
right to borrow from those in a better position. Some were also intolerant of refined
living. For example,