Jacksonian Democracy

In texts by Tocqueville, Douglass, Stanton, and Truth, we read several distinct interpretations
and critiques of American society and politics. For this paper, you will use those texts as primary
sources to respond to the prompt below. Use at least four short quotations to back up your
argument. One of them must be from Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, an American Slave. You should not rely on information from lectures; use evidence
from the texts instead. You can use parenthetical citations for this assignment, with a
bibliography — i.e., (Douglass, 5).

The prompt:
Tocqueville believed that America was the most democratic country in the world, but we
discussed its many failings in class. Was the United States, during the period that we
discussed in class, a democracy? How did the authors that we read assess the prospect for
future developments of American democracy, and how did they believe such changes might
come about? Make sure to give your own explanation of key terms like ‘democracy,’ not a
dictionary definition. If you would like to write about democracy in America today, how
well did the authors’ visions of the future predict the course of events in the United States?

We discussed in class that democracy in America was mainly geared towards white men. Both women and blacks were denied many rights that white men enjoyed.
In the text — Tocqueville, Douglass, Stanton, and Truth. Tocqueville spoke of how much American democracy was more advance than in other part of the world. When he moved back to France he sees that his country he saw glimpse that his country was moving in the right direction towards democracy but was long way away from American progress towards democracy.