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Tocqueville and the American Presidency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Hugh Brogan
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In nothing is the difference between the Presidency today and in the nineteenth century more clearly symbolised than in the matter of accessibility. Today the President is closely guarded both for reasons of security and to save him from unreasonable calls on his time, and what is unreasonable is defined pretty strictly. For example, Mr. Walter Hickel, when he was Secretary of the Interior, found it impossible to get an interview with President Nixon on a matter he thought important. He took the desperate step of leaking his views to the press, and was dismissed for his pains.

Such an episode was inconceivable in the nineteenth century. Everyone knows the story of the reception at the White House on New Year's Day, 1863. So many people called to shake hands with Abraham Lincoln on that day, as was their right, that when he went upstairs to sign the Emancipation Proclamation he could hardly hold the pen steady. And everyone also knows the story of the riotous installation of Andrew Jackson in 1829.

It was then considered highly un-republican, indeed dangerously aristocratic, for a President to seclude himself; and Jackson, whose predecessor, John Quincy Adams, and successor, Martin Van Buren, were both ferociously criticised for their airs and graces (Adams's crime was that he had installed a billiards table in the White House) was particularly careful to give no cause for offence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , December 1981 , pp. 357 - 375
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

References

Hugh Brogan lectures in History at the University of Essex. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the North American Studies Programme conference on the American Presidency at the University of Edinburgh on 26 April 1980.

1 Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr, The Age of Jackson (Boston, 1945), pp. 109–11Google Scholar.

2 de Beaumont, Gustave, Lettres d'Amérique, ed. Jardin, André and Pierson, G. W. (Paris, 1973), p. 210Google Scholar; see also, Pierson, G. W., Tocqueville and Beaumont in America (New York, 1938), p. 664Google Scholar.

3 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Oeuvres Completes, ed. de Beaumont, G. (Paris, 1866), Vol. 3 “Nouvelle Correspondance,” p. 110Google Scholar; Tocqueville to his father, 24 Jan. 1832. Some words have apparently been omitted from the passage dealing with the visit to the White House.

4 See Pierson, pp. 635–36.

5 “The Federalist is a fine book, which, although particular to America, ought to be familiar to the statesmen of every country.” Be la Démocratie en Amérique, Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Mayer, J. P. (Paris, 1961 edn.), I, i, 116Google Scholar, footnote 7, all translations by the present author. This edition is henceforward referred to as DA. The influence of The Federalist is indeed all-pervading in the first volume of Democracy.

6 See footnote 3 above.

7 DA, I, i, 290.

8 “1st November 1831. Who dare doubt the pernicious influence of military glory in republics? What has led the people to choose General Jackson who, it appears, is a very mediocre man? What still guarantees him the votes of the people in spite of the opposition of the enlightened classes? The battle of New Orleans. And yet that battle was a most commonplace military feat, and the people who have let themselves be thus carried away are the most anti-military, the most prosaic, and the coldest of any in the world.” Voyages, Ouevres Complètes, ed. Mayer, J. P. (Paris, 1957), 5, i, 186Google Scholar.

9 DA, I, i, 137.

10 As an institution, it gets eighteen pages in the Mayer edition of the Démocratie, out of a total, in the first volume alone, of four hundred and fifty-three. There is also some interesting material in the discussion of Jackson's Presidency (DA, I, i, 410–11).

11 DA, I, i, 129.

12 DA, I, i, 410.

13 DA, I, i, 12.

14 Ibid.

15 DA, I, i, 5.

16 DA, I, i, 138–40.

17 de Tocqueville, A., Souvenirs, Oeuvres Complètes, Mayer edition; this volume edited by Monnier, Luc (Paris, 1964), 12, 190Google Scholar.

18 He does not, in the Souvenirs, mention the discussion in the Democracy; but the reasons he gives for thinking that he and Beaumont had been wrong in 1848 also apply to 1835: “Our minds were not supple enought and quick enough to change in time and perceive that, from the moment that it had been decided that the citizens themselves should choose the President directly, the evil was irreparable, and would only be made worse by rash attempts to hamper the people in their choice.”

19 DA, I, i, 411

20 “Q. — Does the Presidential election stir up real political passions?

A. — No. It greatly excites those with something to lose or gain. It produces a frightful newspaper clamour. But most people remain quite indifferent to it. The President has so little real influence on public well being! It is Congress which actually governs.” Voyages, 5, i, 150.

21 Pierson, p. 403.

22 DA, I, i, 172.

23 Voyages, 5, i, 291.

24 Here is another example: “It is impossible to study the ordinary course of affairs in the United States without realising that the desire to be re-elected dominates the President's thoughts; that his administration's whole policy converges on this point; that insofar as the critical moment approaches, his individual interest prevails in his mind over the public interest” DA, I, i, 139.

25 Corwin makes this point, quoting Jefferson's first annual message as an example: “Nothing shall be wanting on my part to inform, as far as is in my power, the legislative judgement, nor to carry that judgement into faithful execution.” Corwin, E. S., The President: Office and Powers, 4th revised edition (London and New York, 1957), p. 18Google Scholar.

26 Richardson, James D., ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1897 (Washington D.C.: 1896ff), Vol. 3, p. 71Google Scholar.

27 Quoted in Schlesinger, , Age of Jackson, pp. 106–07, 110Google Scholar.

28 Richardson, , Messages and Papers, 3, 90Google Scholar.

29 DA, I, i, 133–35, “Mode de l'élections.”

30 Tocqueville to Molé, 12 09 1837, Ouvres Complètes (Beaumont), Vol. 2, “Correspondance,” pp. 74–75Google Scholar.

31 Senior, Nassau, Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville, edited by Simpson, M. C. M. (London, 1872), 2, 265Google Scholar. Tocqueville himself is brilliantly severe on his defects as a party man in his Souvenirs (pp. 102–04) — almost as severe as he is on other people.

32 “Parties are an evil which is inherent in free governments. … ” DA, I, i, 178.

33 Ibid., p. 179.

34 Ibid, p. 179.

35 Ibid., p. 181.

36 Ibid., pp. 181–82.

37 Ibid., p. 182.

38 McCormick, Richard P., The Second American Party System (Chapel Hill, 1966)Google Scholar.

39 DA, I, i, 178.

40 Senior, , Conversations, i, 44Google Scholar.

41 Wiltse, Charles M., John C. Calhoun (Indianapolis, 3 vols., 1944–1951)Google Scholar.

42 For instance, the account of American political parties which appears in the Democracy (I, i, 178–82) was very largely inspired by a conversation with Nicholas Biddle, of all people. See Voyages, 5, i, 122–23.