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In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont traveled to America ostensibly to study the country's prison system. It is therefore ironic that the book that emerged from that journey, Democracy in America, was about freedom. More specifically, the trip was a way for Tocqueville to extricate himself from the impossible situation he had to face after the Revolution of July 1830 back in France. In short, he wanted to escape. It is unlikely he would have sailed to America if the July Revolution had not put him in a tight spot personally, politically, and vocationally. Just as Tocqueville's discussion of slavery in his book was not compatible with liberty, writing about prisons was certainly not consistent with thinking about America. His journey to America was thus also an intense personal quest and not a quest to examine democracy in its fullest development.
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