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515 s4s4s4s4s4 c h a p t e r 1 0 Some Considerations on the Present State and Probable Future of the Three Races That Inhabit the Territory of the United Statesa The principal task that I had set for myself has now been fulfilled; I have succeeded, at least as much as I could, in showing what the laws of the American democracy were; I have made its mores known. I could stophere, but the reader would perhaps find that I have not satisfied his expectation. You encounter in America something more than an immense and complete democracy; the peoples who inhabit the New World can be seen from more than one point of view. In the course of this work, my subject often led me to speak about Ina . Added at the last moment, this chapter could not be the object of the critical readings by the family, Kergorlay, or Beaumont. It is not easy to date its composition in a precise way, but many indications lead to the idea that it was written during the spring or summer of 1834. On the 15th of August of that year, his manuscript under his arm, Tocqueville arrived at the chateau de Gallarande, in the Sarthe, invited by Madame Euge ́nie de Sarce, sister of Gustave de Beaumont. He remained with the Beaumonts until the middle of September. In July, Tocqueville had written to Beaumont to confide in him that he did not believe that Gosselin had read the manuscript and to ask his help on the titles of chapters, which indicates that the manuscript sent to Gosselin did not then constitute the definitive text. In this chapter, the similarity to the ideas of Beaumont on the Indians and Blacks is clear. It consists not only of the consideration of identical questions; it even touches on sources and citations. Did Beaumont persuade Tocqueville to treat a question that, in the beginning, belonged to Marie? Does Tocqueville’s decision have something to do with the racial problems that broke out on the East coast of the United States during the summer of 1834? Did Tocqueville review and correct this chapter while with the Beaumont family at the end of the summer? The manuscript of the chapter does not present great differences from the published version and the number of drafts, appreciably less than that for other chapters, attests to a rapid composition. 516 the three races of the united states dians and Negroes, but I never had the time to stop to show what position these two races occupy in the midst of the democratic people that I was busy portraying; I said according to what spirit, with the aid of what laws, the Anglo-American confederation had been formed; I could only indicate in passing, and in a very incomplete way, the dangers that menace this confederation , and it was impossible for me to explain in detailwhatitschances of enduring were, apart from laws and mores. While speaking about the united republics, I hazarded no conjecture about the permanence of republican forms in the New World, and although alluding frequently to the commercial activity that reigns in the Union, I was not able to deal with the future of the Americans as a commercial people. These topics touch on my subject, but do not enter into it; they are American without being democratic, and above all I wanted to portray democracy . So I had to put them aside at first; but I must return to them as I finish.b The territory occupied today, or claimed by the American Union, extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. So in the east or in the west, its limits are those of the continent itself; the territory advances in the south to the edge of the Tropics and then goes back up to the middle of the frozen areas of the North. The men spread throughout this space do not form, as in Europe, so many offshoots of the same family. You discover among them, from the outset, three naturally distinct and, I could almost say, enemy races. Education , laws, origins and even the external formof theirfeatures,haveraised an almost insurmountable barrier between them; fortune gathered them together on the same soil, but it mixed them together without being able to blend them, and each one pursues its destiny apart. Among such diverse men, the first who attracts attention, the first in enlightenment, in power, in happiness, is...

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