Nelson: Alexis de Tocqueville came to Memphis – for better and worse
Daily Memphian
Michael Nelson
Michael Nelson is contributing editor and columnist for The Daily Memphian, the political analyst for WMC-TV, and the Fulmer professor of political science at Rhodes College. His latest books are “Clinton's Elections: 1992, 1996, and the Birth of a New Era of Governance" and “The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776-2018.”
In 1831, the French traveler watched a federal agent load a band of Choctaw Indians onto a ship for transport to Arkansas, a vanguard of the Trail of Tears. “In the whole of this spectacle,” Tocqueville observed, “there was an air of ruin and destruction, something that felt like a final farewell with no returning.”
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