Tocqueville, apparently, was wrong. Jacksonian
America was not a fluid, egalitarian society where
individual wealth and poverty were ephemeral
conditions. At least to argues E. Pessen in his
iconoclastic study of the very rich in the United States
between 1825 and 1850.
Pessen does present a quantity of examples, together
with some refreshingly intelligible statistics, to establish
the existence of an inordinately wealthy class. Though
active in commerce or the professions, most of the
wealthy were not self-made, but had inherited family
fortunes. In no sense mercurial, these great fortunes
survived the financial panics that destroyed lesser ones.
Indeed, in several cities the wealthiest one percent
constantly increased its share until by 1850 it owned
half of the community's wealth. Although these
observations are true, Pessen overestimates their
importance by concluding from them that the undoubted
progress toward inequality in the late eighteenth century
continued in the Jacksonian period and that the United
States was a class-ridden, plutocratic society even
before industrialization.