Liberty Democracy in America is a book that was published in two volumes by the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville. The book is a summarization of Tocqueville’s tour of America in the early 1830’s. He observed the process of democracy in America, race relations, and the notion of equality, which was not bound by class as it was in aristocratic Europe. The chapter of Democracy in America that will be analyzed in this paper is titled, “Situation of the Black Race in the United States, Dangers Entailed for the Whites by Its Presence”. Slavery and American racial mores circa 1830 will be addressed as we continue. At this time, the presence of blacks is the greatest dangers threatening America. African slaves were imported to many colonies and nations other than those in North America, but none of these other slave-importing countries achieved anywhere near the economic growth seen in the United States. Bacon's Rebellion was an event that redefined the notion of race in the United States. Africans were in America long before Bacon’s Rebellion. The Great Migration was a period that the colonies were in desperate need of laborers. Blacks, along with whites, worked as indentured servants. There were black indentured servants that owned land, some even owning slaves themselves. After Bacon’s Rebellion, there was a gradual change in the status of African Americans from indentured servants to slaves. Post Bacon’s Rebellion, there was a great demand for labor and that demand was met through slavery. The number of white indentured servants diminished and the number of black slaves grew. It became the nearly universal presumption that whites were free and blacks were enslaved. Bacon’s Rebellion created fear for another uprising. This fear led to the rise of white supremacy in the United States. This is quite simply the belief of the racist argument that whites were the superior race. This included all whites, not just the upper class. Racism is a particular form of oppression. It stems from discrimination against a group of people based on the idea that some inherited characteristic, such as skin color, makes them inferior to their oppressors America is known as the land of the free. The Declaration of Independence declared that all men were created equally. The United States in the 1830’s was far from being a society based on equality. The inequality created by the laws was reinforced by more, which, according to Tocqueville, are the most difficult thing to change in our modern world. These mores gave rise to three prejudices as outlined by Tocqueville: “the prejudice of the master, the prejudice of race, and the prejudice of the white” (342). These three prejudices became apparent in different ways in the northern and southern regions of the United States. The economies of the North and the South developed differently in the early 1800’s. Although both economies were mostly agricultural, the North began to develop more industry and commerce. Tocqueville acknowledges the difference in the commercial capabilities of southerners and northerners. “Today the North alone has ships, manufactures, railways, and canals. (348). Most of these canals and railroads moved East to West. This growth of industry led to a rapid growth of Northern cities. There was a population growth that came from immigration, mostly immigrants from Europe. By contrast, the Southern economy relied almost solely on plantation farming. While the North was excelled in manufacturing and trading, plantation agriculture was the largest sector of the Southern economy. The climate and soil in the South were ideal for growing cash crops, such as tobacco and cotton. Slaves were the main laborers in this region. Slaves planted and harvested these crops, but it was the slave owner who reaped the benefits. They made great profits from the labor of their slaves. The preservation of slavery was extremely important for the South. Slave owners in the South spent more money owning slaves than they would have paid out in salaries. However, it took years for them to figure this out because the cost of feeding, sheltering, and caring for the slaves was paid in small increments. The cost seemed minute and the free labor a blessing. Another problem that led to the poor economy was that slaves were much less productive than free laborers. Laborers that earned real money had drive and motivation to work more efficiently and produce greater results than the slaves. Slaves had no income and no real hope for freedom. “Race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, an nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known” (343). In short, while white southerners were not inherently less racist than white northerners. Rather, in the South, it was in the interest of white southerners to treat enslaved blacks in a certain manner. This was partly out of fear, partly because of the economic function of the enslaved. A happy slave results in increased productivity. Remove those conditions, and white southerners, as Tocqueville predicted, would display their racism in full force. While Tocqueville certainly considered slavery immoral, his real concern was for its effect on the society, white and black, in the US. He saw slavery as bad, even for the masters, and worse for the slaves. He knew that even freeing the slaves would not be enough to solve the problem. Americans would have to either free themselves from racial prejudice or ship the Black man away.

Laws can be passed, but how an individual feels, views and acts towards another person is something that cannot be changed.