“A divided house will not long lasting. I believe this
government cannot sustain a half-slave and half-free
permanently.”
Candidate senator Abraham
Lincoln, 1858
TWO AMERICANS
There’s no visitors
to the United States who left the notes of his observations and travel
with more fission than the writer and political France, Alexis de
Tocqueville. His book, Democracy in America, Published in 1935,
continues to be the most incisive analysis and insightful about the
social practices and American Politics. Tocqueville is too astute
observes not to criticize the United States, but the conclusion is
basically positive.” The democratic government of spreading the idea of
participating in politics to the right layers the lowest citizen.” He
writes, “as well as the spread of wealth led to the idea of ownership
can be affordable by all human beings.” Nevertheless, Tocqueville was
just one of a long row of thinkers who are dismayed by what that kind of
equality can survive before the emerging industrial system that
threatens to create separation between workers with new business elite.
The other visitors were amazed looking at the growth and vitality of
the country, where they can see “the real proof will be prosperity and
rapid progress in the field everywhere.” But that kind of optimistic
view towards the American experiment does not mean everyone approved.
One who doubts is the United Kingdom, the novelist Charles Dickens, who
first came to the United States in 1841-42. ”This is not a Republican
like to seen.” He writes in the letter. “This is not a Republican in my
reflection… the more I imagine youthfulness and strength, it seems to
get worse and the more paltry in thousands of ways. In everything that
his proud – exclude his education to the community, and it’s against
poor children – this Republic are far below the level that my guess
before.”
Dickens was not alone. America in the 19th century, as
throughout its history, evoking the hope and desire that often collies
with the reality of the more ponderous and complex. The size and invites
a contradiction: American’s freedom – loving societies and implement
slavery, the country’s border areas with expansive and primitive,
society with cities built upon trade and industrialization were growing
rapidly.