Whitman, Walt

Autograph manuscript, 1 page (7 x 4  3/4  in.; 177 x 120 mm), n.p., c. 1867, entitled "Democracy"; some browning, horizonal and vertical folds, sheet mounted to slightly larger sheet.  Half green morocco gilt folding-case, green buckram covers, matching chemise. 

Autograph manuscript, 1 page (7 x 4 3/4 in.; 177 x 120 mm), n.p., c. 1867, entitled "Democracy"; some browning, horizonal and vertical folds, sheet mounted to slightly larger sheet. Half green morocco gilt folding-case, green buckram covers, matching chemise.
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Whitman on Alexis de Tocqueville and American democracy.  Under the heading "Democracy," Whitman continues, "that it is so rare to find it understood, to find the great height & beauty, & practical fibre of American democracy understood (while it exists unconscious in the people), that I can almost say I have not met three men in all my life that I have felt they understood it.  And though it is humiliating to say so it is perhaps true that one noble Frenchman [Tocqueville] has ascended higher & understood the theoretical span better than any American we yet know."

This brief passage may be a fragment excised from Democratic Vistas or from a short piece titled "Democracy in the New World."