Against this image of Tocqueville, biographer Joseph Epstein has concluded: "Tocqueville could never bring himself to serve a man he considered a usurper and despot. He fought as best he could for the political liberty in which he so ardently believed—had given it, in all, thirteen years of his life [...]. He would spend the days remaining to him fighting the same fight, but conducting it now from libraries, archives, and his own desk". There, he began the draft of , publishing the first tome in 1856, but leaving the second one unfinished.