Society in America, Volume 1 (of 2)
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~130,000 words · 624 passages
Cite this work
- APAHarriet Martineau. (n.d.). Society in America, Volume 1 (of 2). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/harriet-martineau/society-in-america-volume-1-of-2
- MLAHarriet Martineau. Society in America, Volume 1 (of 2). Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/harriet-martineau/society-in-america-volume-1-of-2.
- ChicagoHarriet Martineau. Society in America, Volume 1 (of 2). Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/harriet-martineau/society-in-america-volume-1-of-2.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The first volume of Harriet Martineau's 1837 study of the United States, setting what the country said of itself against what she found there.
Context and history
Martineau travelled through the United States between 1834 and 1836 and published this in 1837. What makes it remarkable is not the travel narrative but the method: she went with a criterion declared in advance — to compare what the country said of itself in its founding documents with what she found there — and with rules for how to observe, which she published separately. That is why she is counted among the founders of sociology, and often is not listed as one. Her conclusion is hard: the republic that proclaims itself founded on equality holds slaves and keeps women without rights, and the two facts are of one kind. She wrote it when doing so could cost her her safety in the southern states, and it did. She had been deaf since youth and earned her living by writing throughout her adult life.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
elastic form, must be given to every institution. "The majority are in the right." Such is the theory. Few individuals of this majority can act for longer than two-score years and ten; few for so long. No one can suppose that his successor will think or feel as he does, however strict may be the regard of each to the fundamental principles which are to regulate his citizenship. It is absolutely necessary, to secure permanence to the recognition of those principles, that there should be liberty to change the form which contains them. Else, in the endless variety of human views and interests, there is danger lest men, being prohibited from producing a correspondence between the principles they recognise, and the forms they desire, should, because interdicted from outward change, gradually alter the spirit of their government. In such a case, men would be some time in discovering that the fair body of their constitution has become possessed, while they had supposed her inspired: and, to pass over the mischiefs which might happen during the period of her possession, the work of exorcism would be difficult and perilous. FOOTNOTE: [1] Declaration of Independence. CHAPTER I. PARTIES. "For these are the men that, when they have played their parts, and had their exits, must step out, and give the moral of their scenes, and deliver unto posterity an inventory of their virtues and vices." _Sir Thomas Browne._ The first gentleman who greeted me on my arrival in the United States, a few minutes after I had landed, informed me without delay, that I had arrived at an unhappy crisis; that the institutions of the country would be in ruins before my return to England; that the levelling spirit was desolating society; and that the United States were on the verge of a military despotism.…