Volume I, Chapter XVII: Principal Causes Maintaining the Democratic Republic—Part II
Alexis de Tocqueville
Tocqueville wrote as America was still finding its democratic footing, decades after its founding but before its Civil War. He saw that legal structures alone couldn't uphold a society; the people's collective character and ethics were the true bedrock. This ran counter to the prevailing Enlightenment belief that rational systems could solve any social ill. Morals, in his view, wield the power to redeem or unravel any legal framework.