“Children in their games are wont to submit to rules which they have themselves established, and to punish misdemeanours which they have themselves defined.” Thus did Tocqueville marvel at Americans’ habit of self-government, and the temperament it both required and encouraged from a young age. “The same spirit,” he said, “pervades every act of social life.” The unsupervised games and rituals of children in the 19th century were nicely depicted (with comic exaggeration) in Mark Twain’s novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
