In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville claimed that the dominant fact of American life was “the equality of conditions,” which held “no less sway over civil society than over government.”1 Equality helped explain two main features of life under American democracy: the prevalence of private associations, which Tocqueville thought crucial to protecting liberty, and the power of public opinion, which he worried might prove the basis for a new democratic despotism. Both Kevin Butterfield and Mark Schmeller look back to Tocqueville in their respective histories of associations and public opinion in the nineteenth-century United States. Their books are productively read together, as they differ considerably in method and focus despite their shared orientation. Read in dialogue, these books raise a question that haunts Tocqueville’s analysis of the United States: How could a society defined by “the equality of conditions” sustain the blunt inequality of slavery? Tocqueville found the proliferation of private associations in the antebellum United States nothing short of remarkable. Butterfield explains how that world came to be, by tracing the legal history of membership in private groups. Like Tocqueville, he sees Americans as passionate joiners. “After the Revolution,” Butterfield contends, “men and women at all levels of social standing, white and black, and in communities large and small, embraced voluntarism and self-created, relatively formal organizations as the very best means to improve society and their own lives” (p. 3). While one should question these sweeping claims about voluntarism, given the extent of slavery and subordination in the post-Revolutionary United States, the associational impulse was clearly strong—and as Butterfield episodically indicates, it extended beyond the ranks of free white men.

中文翻译：

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蓄奴共和国的公民社会

在《美国的民主》一书中，亚历克西斯·德·托克维尔 (Alexis de Tocqueville) 声称，美国生活的主要事实是“条件平等”，它“对公民社会的影响不亚于对政府的影响。”1 平等有助于解释美国民主下生活的两个主要特征：托克维尔认为对保护自由至关重要的私人协会的盛行，以及他担心可能会成为新民主专制主义基础的公众舆论的力量。凯文·巴特菲尔德 (Kevin Butterfield) 和马克·施梅勒 (Mark Schmeller) 都在各自 19 世纪美国的协会和舆论历史中回顾了托克维尔。他们的书一起阅读很有成效，因为尽管他们的方向相同，但在方法和重点上却大不相同。在对话中阅读，这些书提出了一个困扰托克维尔对美国分析的问题：一个由“条件平等”定义的社会如何维持奴隶制的明显不平等？托克维尔发现，在美国内战前，私人协会的激增令人瞩目。巴特菲尔德通过追溯私人团体成员资格的法律历史来解释那个世界是如何形成的。像托克维尔一样，他将美国人视为热情的木匠。“革命之后，”巴特菲尔德争辩道，“无论是白人还是黑人，无论是社会地位的各个层面，还是大大小小的社区，男女都接受了自愿主义和自行创建的相对正式的组织，将其作为改善社会和发展的最佳手段。他们自己的生活”（第 3 页）。虽然人们应该质疑这些关于自愿主义的笼统主张，