In this part of the work, Tocqueville considers what makes American democracy unique and what institutions are central to its functioning. He wrote several letters to people back home and instructed recipients to keep them, as he knew they would be important someday. Tocqueville traveled from New York, to Michigan, to Ohio, even taking a steamboat down the Mississippi to New Orleans. While Tocqueville did visit some prisons, he traveled widely in America and took extensive notes about his observations and reflections. In 1831, he obtained from the July Monarchy a mission to examine prisons and penitentiaries in America, and proceeded there with his lifelong friend Gustave de Beaumont. He means that everyone views themselves as subject to the same opportunities under the law rather than as part of a social hierarchy. Tocqueville describes this new social state as defined by equality of conditions. Alexis de Tocqueville published this study of America in two parts: the first, on how American democracy works to serve as an example to his native France the second, on the phenomenon of democracy more generally in the modern world. This section occurs in Volume I of Democracy in America.
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