.
>> “But it seems amidst all his works there was overreach and problems.” <<
A rather poor choice of words on your part!
Should have been qualified as your opinion.
.
"It seems" is accurate as i have not researched as to whether the allegations are true and how much so as to state it as fact, and the lawsuit settlement seems to weight toward his overall credibility. At this point I would surmise most likely many of the charges have some merit but that this does not characterize most of his work.
Some will charge as fraud an quote which cannot be verified as to the attributed author, but it may indeed may have been said by them. I myself have a compilation of quotes from Founders which i endevoured to find reliable sources for, but which can be hard, while often i have seen quotes her on FR for which the source of the attribution cannot be found (and or sometimes in the case of Luther it is lifted out of context to support something he argued against).
Who has not see attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville,
In the end, the state of the Union comes down to the character of the people. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there. In the fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there. In her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits, aflame with righteousness, did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
This has often been attributed to de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, but erroneously, according to "The Tocqueville Fraud" in The Weekly Standard (13 November 1995). This quote dates back to at least 1922 (Herald and Presbyter, September 6, 1922, p. 8)
There's an earlier variant, without the memorable ending, that dates back to at least 1886:
I went at your bidding, and passed along their thoroughfares of trade. I ascended their mountains and went down their valleys. I visited their manufactories, their commercial markets, and emporiums of trade. I entered their judicial courts and legislative halls. But I sought everywhere in vain for the secret of their success, until I entered the church. It was there, as I listened to the soul-equalizing and soul-elevating principles of the Gospel of Christ, as they fell from Sabbath to Sabbath upon the masses of the people, that I learned why America was great and free, and why France was a slave. - Empty Pews & Selections from Other Sermons on Timely Topics, Madison Clinton Peters; Zeising, 1886, p. 35
And,
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."
Which is often attributed to Tocqueville or Alexander Fraser Tytler, but the earliest known occurrence is as an unsourced attribution to Tytler in "This is the Hard Core of Freedom" by Elmer T. Peterson in The Daily Oklahoman (9 December 1951):
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville#Misattributed
All the above are true statements and worthy to be published, as is the next prophetic quote but for which i could not find early attribution, as the earliest source I have found is from a compilation of quotes first published in 1908, and without details of when and where it was said (such details I suspect were not a priority in that era):
• If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be;
If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; If the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will;
If the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end." (Tryon Edwards, “A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern ,“1908. p. 49)