Reed Fagan’s Reviews > Democracy in America > Status Update

"The frightful sufferings that attend [forced migrations is inconceivable ]...Already exhausted, the lands to which [they arrive] are inhabited by other tribes...Hunger is in the rear, war awaits them, & misery besets on all sides. To escape so many enemies, they separate, & each individual [tries to eke out a living]. The social tie is then dissolved; they have no longer a country, & soon they will not be a people."

Sect."Condition of the Indian tribes..."
"From the moment when a European settlement is formed in the neighborhood, the beasts of chase take the alarm...The approach of the whites is often felt at 200 leagues' distance from the frontier. Their influence is thus exerted over tribes whose name is unknown to them, and who suffer the evils of usurpation long before they are acquainted with the authors of their distress."

Poignant anecdote of stumbling across an "Indian woman", "Negress", & white girl of 5 or 6 years, seeing them enjoy time by a forested spring, until they noticed him watching at which point they left.
dT:"a bond of affection here united the oppressors with the oppressed, and the effort of Nature to bring them together rendered still more striking the immense distance placed between them by prejudice and the laws."

"The Negro plunged in this abyss of evils [chattel slavery], scarcely feels his own calamitous situation. Violence made him a slave, and the habit of servitude gives him the thoughts & desires of a slave; he admires his tyrants more than he hates them, & finds his joy & his pride in the servile imitation of those who oppress him. His understanding is degraded to the level of his soul."-A more reasonable depiction.

Sect. "Importance of what precedes with respect to the state of Europe"
"When I consider the present condition of several European nations,...I am led to believe that they will soon be left with no other alternative than democratic liberty or the tyranny of the Caesars." -p.329
Hard to know what an in-between would be, a gentle monarchy? Oligarchies? Anarchy? Not sure, but since the 1830s I think he predicted right.

Sec.: "The laws contribute more to the maintenance of the Democratic Republic..."

"So seriously, do I insist upon this head that, if I have hitherto failed in making the reader feel the important influence of the practical experience, the habits, the opinions, in short, of the customs of the Americans upon the maintenance of their institutions, I have failed in the principal object of my work."- p.323

Section: "Principal Causes Which Render Religion Powerful in America"

"Causes Which Tend to Maintain Democracy"
Sect. "Indirect influence of religious opinions upon political society in the United States."
T calls the US a Christian nation, it seems not so much b/c of the laws as written but b/c of the ppl living therein. To him, this influence emphasizes equality, fosters freedom & encourages order, a type of conservativism/anti-revolutionaryism.

Causes which Tend to Maintain Democracy.
"Fortune has been promised to [the Americans] somewhere in the West, and to the West they go to find it."