Essay 82: How Democracy Alters The Relations Between Master And Servant (Vol. 2 Pt. 3 Ch. 5)

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

The essays in our study reference the following edition of Democracy In America: University of Chicago Press – 1st edition translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Today’s essay references pages 546 – 553 (stop at chapter 6 heading) of this edition of Democracy in America.

De Tocqueville in this chapter continues his investigation of social customs and mores in America, but he uses his description to support his larger point about the contrast between aristocratic society and democratic society. His analysis here reinforces his on-going contention that democracy in America means much more than simply having large numbers of citizens voting. When it comes to employment and working for others, De Tocqueville asserts, “Democracy does not prevent these two classes [masters and servants] from existing; but it changes their spirit and modifies their relations.”

In describing the aristocratic view, De Tocqueville describes a society in which servants accept and endorse hierarchy of both authority and social standing. Because servants are permanently in a lower class, they cannot change their standing. They accept the commands of their master and often come to identify their interests with their master’s interests. They also accept a hierarchy amongst themselves. De Tocqueville observes, “Whoever occupies the last step in a hierarchy of valets is base indeed.” This reality has been captured for Americans by depictions of service in the period drama Downton Abbey. While all those in service acknowledge the superiority of the Grantham family, there exists “downstairs” among the servants a rigid hierarchy that extends from the Butler Mr. Carson all the way down to the newest footman. The youngest footman can dream of nothing more than over many years ascending within this household hierarchy.

De Tocqueville then contrasts this aristocratic, European view with the American reality. Put simply, “Equality of conditions makes new beings of servant and master and establishes new relations between them.” Rather than forming a separate or permanent class, servants saw themselves as undertaking a temporary role, in the confidence that they would shortly rise in their conditions. “At each instance,” De Tocqueville observes, “the servant can become a master and aspire to become one; the servant, therefore, is not another man than the master.” What binds the two together is the existence of a written contract, freely entered into by both sides.

De Tocqueville then has to modify his description. He acknowledges that he is talking about the labor conditions among whites in the North and the West. The existence of slavery in the South made for totally different conditions there. For De Tocqueville, however, “particularly in New England, one encounters a fairly large number of whites who consent to submit temporarily to the will of those like themselves in return for a wage. I heard it said that these servants ordinarily fulfill the duties of their state exactly and intelligently, and that without believing themselves naturally inferior to whoever commands them, they submit without trouble to obey him.” (551)

De Tocqueville’s description of New England employment echoes other testimonies. In an early American play, The Contrast by Royall Tyler, we see a New England youth named Jonathan. He is serving as a footman for a Revolutionary War veteran named Manly. When described by a European-trained valet as “a servant,” Jonathan objects strenuously. He insists, “I am Colonel Manly’s waiter.” The word choice is significant, as it justifies his status and the dignity of his employment. Jonathan then protests that he is “a true blue son of liberty,” and he could not be a servant because “no man shall master me.” He emphasizes his equal status and insists that his family’s farm was just as good as that of his employer.

De Tocqueville would immediately grasp the import of this exchange. The status of servanthood—such as a “waiter”—is temporary. It would last only as long as the contract lasted and would not extend one step beyond the contract.  It also did nothing to change the intrinsic equality of both employer and employee as humans and as citizens. Each carried within himself the same political and social weight, just as their votes would be equal at the next election.

A generation after De Tocqueville, the rising Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln pointed to a very similar conviction in the West. Addressing the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Lincoln praised the American approach of freely accepting to work for wages as a first step in a long career. He rejected the “mud-sill theory” that expected a permanent class of workers mired in drudgery. In contrast, Lincoln praised the free labor ideal which encouraged young men to sell their labor but maintained multiple routes by which they could rise in society.

For contemporary readers, then, De Tocqueville’s chapter on servants and masters can reaffirm a long-standing American attitude to employment. Many work for others—often quite closely. That labor, however, should be such that it doesn’t prevent them from rising economically—and perhaps eventually hiring others. Further, no matter the job, each individual bears inherent dignity as a citizen and so deserves society’s respect.   

Dr. Jonathan Den Hartog is Professor of History and the Chair of the History Department at Samford University. He is the author of Patriotism and Piety: Federalist Politics and Religious Struggle in the New American Nation and the co-editor of Disestablishment and Religious Dissent: Church-State Relations in the New American States.

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