TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE

TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE. [1831] French nobleman who, with companion Gustave de Beaumont, traveled America for nine months to study and evaluate democracy. The sojourn culminated in the publication of De la Démocratie en Amérique, which became a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. The original Tocqueville papers deposited at the Château de Tocqueville in Normandy have been lost. Reproductions can be found at Yale University’s Beinecke. The entries reproduced here are taken from Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, by George Wilson Pierson. New York, Oxford University Press, 1938. Tocqueville’s travel diary published as Journey to America, edited by J. P. Mayer, New Haven, 1959.