De Tocqueville, Population Movements, and Revealed Institutional Preferences

During their grand tour of the United States in 1831–1832, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont struggled to make sense of the regional differences, until they traveled down the Ohio River. There, they observed differences on opposite riverbanks, where the environment is similar but the institutions differ. They reported that the northern side attracted more free migrants than the southern side; and that this difference bolstered the regional disparities in population growth (with important consequences for the antebellum political economy). Following their analysis, we examine the emigrant guidebooks and travelers’ accounts of the environmental and institutional attributes of the free and slave regions. We then use census data to analyze the behavior of migrants to the border region. We find that the revealed institutional preferences of free people are key to understanding the comparative development of the regions.