His clearness of vision appears in the distinctness with which he recognized the peril from Slavery and from the pretensions of the States. And in Slavery he saw also the prolonged and diversified indignity to the African race. This was his statement:—
“The most formidable of all the evils which menace the future of the United States springs from the presence of the blacks on their soil. When we seek the cause of the present embarrassments and of the future dangers of the Union, from whatever point we set out, we almost always come upon this primary fact.”[635]
Then with consummate power he depicts the lot of the unhappy African, even when free: oppressed, but with whites for judges; shut out from the jury; his son excluded from the school which receives the descendant of the European; unable with gold to buy a place at the theatre “by the side of him who was his master”; in hospitals separated from the rest; permitted to worship the same God as the whites, but not to pray at the same altar; and when life is passed, the difference of condition prevailing still even over the equality of the grave.[636]
Impressed by the menace from Slavery, he further pictures the Union succumbing to the States:—
“Either I strangely deceive myself, or the Federal Government of the United States is tending every day to grow weaker. It is withdrawing gradually from affairs; it is contracting more and more the circle of its action. Naturally feeble, it is abandoning even the appearance of force.”[637]
Such was the condition when De Tocqueville wrote; and so it continued until the Rebellion broke forth, and the country rose to save the Union. Foreseeing this peril, he did not despair of the Republic, which, in his judgment, was “the natural state of the Americans,”[638] with roots more profound than the Union.
In describing the future he becomes a prophet. Accepting the conclusion that the number of inhabitants doubles in twenty-two years, and not recognizing any causes to arrest this progressive movement, he foresees the colossal empire:—
“The Americans of the United States, whatever they do, will become one of the greatest people of the world; they will cover with their offshoots almost all North America. The continent which they inhabit is their domain; it cannot escape them.”[639]
Then, declaring that the “English race,” not stopping within the limits of the Union, will advance much beyond towards the Northeast,—that at the Northwest they will encounter only Russian settlements without importance,—that at the Southwest the vast solitudes of Mexican territory will be appropriated,—and dwelling on the fortunate geographical position of “the English of America,” with their climate, their interior seas, their great rivers, and the fertility of their soil, he is ready to say:—