Travels with Tocqueville

I saw Richard Reeves latest title, Infamy, and thought it an odd subject for a historian who made himself famous by his profiles of Presidents. I decided to peruse his other titles and landed on American Journey, in which he traces the path of Tocqueville around the country from 1831-32 looking for the essence of our Democracy. Reviews were mixed, but for a pence from amazon.co.uk who can resist.

As Robert Nisbet notes in his review that Tocqueville is also an odd choice for Reeves, as Alexis was "a profoundly conservative young aristocrat interested in the United States as a sociobiologist is interested in a community of birds or animals." Reeves is every bit the American liberal but he has tackled conservative figures like Nixon and Reagan in his biographies, so it seems that his reading of Tocqueville had an influence on him.

I had read Democracy in America after being goaded by Goliard in the old NY Times book forum, as he saw this as a seminal book in American politics. Tocqueville assessed the fallout from the Andrew Jackson landslide electoral victory and came to the conclusion that the young country was run by a "tyranny of the majority." He offers some profound insights into the nature of the US Constitution and how it differs from the state constitutions in terms of the individual vs. the community, but throughout we sense the young aristocrat's distaste for Jackson, who he sees as nothing more than a populist figure who managed to hoodwink the country with the false illusion of democracy. I could see how a book like this would appeal to conservatives like Goliard, but wondered why it was continually cited by liberals as well. It will be interesting to read Reeves' take on Tocqueville.

For others, especially a young Walt Whitman, Jackson represented a seismic shift in American politics. His election in 1828 brought to an end the last remnants of the Federalist era in John Quincy Adams, who had scored a narrow electoral victory over Jackson in 1824. Jackson refused to renew the charter on the National Bank, and wanted to decentralize the national government, which the Federalists had worked so hard to achieve. Jackson cited Jefferson as his inspiration, but Jefferson had upheld much of the Federalist structure, as had Madison and Monroe and J.Q. Adams.

By contrast, Tocqueville saw the Founding Fathers as iconic figures and couldn't understand why Americans would turn their backs on them. Americans hadn't. They just saw them in a completely different light than did Tocqueville, Jefferson especially.

From today's stand point, Jackson would be seen as a Teabagger, but in the 1940s he was seen as the founding inspiration of the Democratic Party, and revered by historians like Arthur Schlesinger, who praised him in The Age of Jackson. It's odd considering that Jackson was the very antithesis of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who Schlesinger also praised, but the young historian made a very convincing case for Jacksonian Democracy just the same.

I don't know how much of these dichotomies Reeves pursued in his 1982 travels with Tocqueville, but there is no doubting the influence Tocqueville has had on historians and politicians over the last two centuries. Goliard was right about that.

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud. -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!

Dispatches from Vilnius

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