AUTHOR'S PREFACE. HIS historical study of American democracy, por THIS tions of which have appeared in the Revue de Deux Mondes' between 1857 and 1860, was written before the formidable outbreak which now desolates the United States. It is not, therefore, a work got up for the occasion; but, though not written for the purpose of explaining the actual crisis, it nevertheless contains a variety of particulars tending to throw light upon the nature of the evils to which the United States have been subject from their very beginning, and which, I think, will not be unacceptable to those who concern themselves about the fate of democratic societies. The sources from which I have principally derived my materials are these: The collection of Jefferson's papers published by order of Congress. * The two apologetic biographies of Jefferson, published successively by Mr. Tucker† and Mr. * Jefferson's complete Works, New York, 1853-54, 9 vols. Life of Jefferson, by George Tucker, London, 1837, 2 vols. [Mr. Tucker, related to the Jeffersons, appears to have written his work, at the request of the family, as an indirect answer to the severe Randall,* both of which contain very valuable docu ments. The works of Hildreth,+ John Church Hamilton, Smucker,§ Theodore Dwight,|| and Henry Lee, from which we learn the nature of the objections taken by Jefferson's opponents to his personal and political conduct. ** The able History of the United States by Bancroft; that of Tucker; ++ Curtis's excellent work on the History of the Constitution of the United States; the Life of strictures of Major Henry Lee on Jefferson's conduct. Though writing as an apologist, and obliged in general to succumb to the exigencies of his task, he is often highly candid and just in his appreciations.] *Life of Jefferson, by Henry Randall, New York, 1858, 3 vols. [This work is not yet in the British Museum. The originals of the extracts cited from it in the French have been obligingly communicated to me by M. de Witt.] History of the United States, from the discovery of the conti-, nent to the end of the sixteenth Congress, by Richard Hildreth; New York, 1849-52. History of the Republic of the United States of America, as traced in the writings of Alexander Hamilton and his contemporaries, by John C. Hamilton, New York, 1857, 2 vols. § Life of Thomas Jefferson, by Smucker. Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson, by Theodore Dwight, Boston, 1839. ¶ Observations on the writings of Jefferson, by Henry Lee, Philadelphia, 1839. [This edition is by Major Henry Lee's brother, Mr. C. Carter Lee, who has added some valuable notes. The work is a vindication of General Lee and others from Jefferson's aspersions, and is a most severe analysis of Jefferson's conduct.] ** History of the United States, by George Bancroft, Boston, 7 vols. tt History of the United States, from their colonisation to the twenty-sixth Congress, in 1841, by George Tucker, Philadelphia, 1857, 4 vols. History of the Constitution of the United States, by George Ticknor Curtis, New York, 1854, 2 vols. |