Essay 45: De Tocqueville– “A Few Remarks On The Present Day State And The Probable Future Of The Three Races Which Live In The Territory Of The United States” (Vol. 1 Pt. 2 Ch. 10, Subch. 2)
Alexis de Tocqueville uses his keen insights and talents for observation to focus on the question of slavery and blacks in the newly created United States of America.
Near the end of his essay on this topic he once again demonstrates the prescience and perception that he has revealed throughout the book “Democracy in America”. In this essay, he predicts slavery’s demise.
He explains at the end of the essay, “… whatever the efforts of Americans of the south to preserve slavery, they will not succeed at it forever….in the midst of the democratic freedom and enlightenment of our age [slavery] is not an institution that can endure.”
Indeed, slavery ended in the US. It proved incompatible with the remarkable ideas of our founders including the foundational principle that “All Men are Created Equal.” The end came about as the result of the most consequential war that this nation had ever experienced. Greater and more deadly for Americans than World War I and World War II. Certainly, greater than the losses of the Revolutionary War. The Civil War cost more American lives than any war the US has ever been involved in.