One of the components in the attraction the United States long held for French people, especially on the Left, was the apparent social equality that was said to reign in that country. Thus it was believed that all farmers worked farms of similar size, that artisans and workers were not held back from participating in politics, that there was no real poverty, and that there were multiple avenues of upward social mobility. This perception of a Promised Land of social equality culminated with the victory of the North over the South, seen as the victory of the democratic Yankee over the aristocratic Southerner, the victory of the working man, symbolized by the rail-splitter Abraham Lincoln who became President, over the rich landowner. The same information made the French conservative milieux feel most uncomfortable about the reputedly uncouth and egalitarian American society.

Views of this kind did not stand up to serious examination. Social equality never actually existed, except in the form of a myth that was dispelled once and for all amidst the din of a ruthless industrialization during the years of the Gilded Age. Would the French continue to make the United States into a working man's paradise, the Promised Land of social peace? This could be done only by people who used the example of the United States to bolster their ideological presuppositions and who were not interested in the realities. By the same token, the sudden awareness of the many facts that were shattering this peaceful and egalitarian image could lead to the rejection of any American model, a rejection as absolute as the admiration of the preceding years.