Between 1815 arid 1850, hundreds of men and women journeyed to the United States not as immigrants but as investigators seeking first-hand knowledge of the “giant new nation” of North America. Many of these visitors later published accounts in description, and sometimes explanation, of what they had seen and heard. Tocqueville’s Democracy in America comes quickly to mind, of course; but there were other studies by other visitors, though their names are now less familiar to us. Harriet Martineau, for instance, came lu the United States in 1834. remained nearly two full years, and then wrote a two-volume study of (The Theory and Practice of) Society in America (1837), plus a retrospect of her western travels (1838; also see 1877: I, 329-409). Michel Chevalier’s perceptive study of the emerging industrial economy (1836) was based on his tour of inspection during the years 1833-35. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. early social scientist and future President of Argentina, visited in 1847 and then published an account of his travels and a study of education in the United States (1866; 1909). And there were many others. Of all these accounts, however, only Tocqueville’s became the celebrated “classic”. Soon after its first appearance in France, Henry Reeve prepared an English edition for publication in London and. with a special introduction by John Canfield Spencer, in New York. In each country Democracy in America was received with great acclaim. No less a figure than John Stuart Mill (1840:3) pronounced it “the first philosophical book ever written on Democracy, as it manifests itself in modern society; … the beginning of a new era in the scientific study of politics”. First notices in the United States were nearly as laudatory: an essay in the July 1836 issue of North American Review, attributed to Edward Everett, regarded “this work now before us, as by far the most philosophical, ingenious and instructive, which has been produced in Europe on the subject of America.”
