conquering. This new manthe hero of Tocquevilles epic philosophy, a true democratwas free of the social prejudices of his European ancestors. Tocqueville renders him like something out of Jean-Jacques Rousseaus dreams, with some Hellenistic touches thrown in.As Damrosch points out, though, Tocqueville had his blind spots. He didnt understand that most Americans he happened to meet were upper-class New England Brahmins, the American equivalent of aristocracyand thus his America looks much more egalitarian than it actually was. And Tocquevilles own prejudices come through in his derisive portrait of President Andrew Jackson, who, in the middle of an electoral campaign, granted Tocqueville and Beaumont an interview at the White House. Tocqueville resented Jackson as uncouth and uneducated, and Tocquevilles fear of the tyranny of the majority, and of public opinion generally, revealed his aristocratic leanings. He loved democracy as an egalitarian ideal but would have preferred that it be guided by enlightened elites, not Jacksonian populism. This built-in contradiction, as Damrosch rightly points out, helps explain the nostalgia that imbues the whole of Tocquevilles writings.Damrosch is at his best when discussing Tocquevilles sources. Based on Tocquevilles correspondence and notes, and Beaumonts notes as well, Damrosch has reconstructed Tocquevilles itinerary and described the people he encountered. They werent always happy with his reconstructions of their conversations. When Tocqueville later wrote about the potential for a stultifying tyranny of the majority, Jared Sparks, editor of a Boston literary journal and one of Tocquevilles leading sources, became indignant: he complained that Tocqueville had misunderstood his meaning, which was simply that a majority in the legislature might abuse its power. In Sparkss view, even if that did happen and the legislature passed oppressive laws, the majority will certainly be changed at the next election. Which version of this famous insight in Democracy in America is closer to the truth? It remains an open debate.Much of Tocquevilles reputation for prophecy rests on his writing on the inevitability of civil war between the North and the South. Tocqueville was truly shaken by the immorality of slavery, but his fear of a coming civil war, as Damrosch shows, was fully indebted to John Quincy Adams. It was the former president, fluent in French, who explained to Tocqueville how slavery has altered the entire state of the South. Before Tocqueville did, Adams envisioned that the conflict over slavery could lead to the dissolution of the Union. Tocqueville deserves credit, however, for understanding and conveying the gravity of the issue a generation before the Civil War occurred.If Tocqueville had been just a social thinker or a political philosopher, we probably wouldnt be reading him today. He happened to be a gifted writer as well. Another of the Hudson Review letters, addressed to his mother and dated December 25, 1831, describes the deportation of the Choctaw Indians beyond the Mississippi at Memphis. One feels heartsick today at Tocquevilles description of the women carrying children tied to their back or swaddled in blankets. The Americans, he adds, being more humane, more respectful of law and legality, never bloodthirsty, are more profoundly destructive of the