However, he championed the principle of single-term presidencies. After helping to write the French Republican Constitution of 1848, he was unable to gain enough support for a Senate. In 1848, he supported a shift from a monarchy to a republic, brandishing the example of the United States to convince the Parliament that a republic was viable. This model inspired Tocqueville when he was a representative. By contrast, American federalism and above all the vigor of secular and religious organizations guaranteed individual liberties. This is how freedoms in France were crushed by an all-powerful central administration. In France, these were the nobility, regional parliaments, and local elected officials, which were all attacked and destroyed by the monarchy, the French Revolution, and Napoleon I with alarming continuity. The United States had shown that another society was possible, in which state despotism was controlled by intermediary bodies. While writing his second – and unfinished – major book on the French Revolution, he compared France under the Ancien Régime with American democracy. He never went back, but his discovery of the United States enlightened his life’s work. How did this single trip have such a lasting influence on his life? Tocqueville never returned to the United States after writing Democracy in America, unlike Lafayette.
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