The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828–1861
The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828–1861

Author: Yonatan Eyal

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-08-20

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1139466690

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The phrase 'Young America' connoted territorial and commercial expansion in the antebellum United States. During the years leading up to the Civil War, it permeated various parts of the Democratic party, producing new perspectives in the realms of economics, foreign policy, and constitutionalism. Led by figures such as Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and editor John L. O'Sullivan of New York, Young America Democrats gained power during the late 1840s and early 1850s. They challenged a variety of orthodox Jacksonian assumptions, influencing both the nation's foreign policy and its domestic politics. This 2007 book offers an exclusively political history of Young America's impact on the Democratic Party, complementing existing studies of the literary and cultural dimensions of this group. This close look at the Young America Democracy sheds light on the political realignments of the 1850s and the coming of the Civil War, in addition to showcasing the origins of America's longest existing political party.

The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828-1861
The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828-1861

Author: Yonatan Eyal

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-08-20

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780521875646

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This book investigates a particular group, called Young America, within the U.S. Democratic Party during the 1840s and 1850s. It argues that members of this group changed what it meant to be a Democrat. They moved the party toward new economic thinking, greater engagement with the world, a more active reform attitude, and a new view of the U.S. Constitution, thus playing a role in the coming of the American Civil War. This is the first full-blown examination of Young America's impact in the realm of politics, as opposed to merely literature and culture.

The Market Revolution in America
The Market Revolution in America

Author: John Lauritz Larson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2009-09-14

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1139483420

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The mass industrial democracy that is the modern United States bears little resemblance to the simple agrarian republic that gave it birth. The market revolution is the reason for this dramatic - and ironic - metamorphosis. The resulting tangled frameworks of democracy and capitalism still dominate the world as it responds to the panic of 2008. Early Americans experienced what we now call 'modernization'. The exhilaration - and pain - they endured have been repeated in nearly every part of the globe. Born of freedom and ambition, the market revolution in America fed on democracy and individualism even while it generated inequality, dependency, and unimagined wealth and power. In this book, John Lauritz Larson explores the lure of market capitalism and the beginnings of industrialization in the United States. His research combines an appreciation for enterprise and innovation with recognition of negative and unanticipated consequences of the transition to capitalism and relates economic change directly to American freedom and self-determination, links that remain entirely relevant today.

The Jacksonian Promise
The Jacksonian Promise

Author: Daniel Feller

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 1995-11-10

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780801851681

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In Jacksonian Promise historian Daniel Feller offers a fresh look at the United States in the tumultuous Age of Jackson. Viewing the era through the eyes of people who lived in it, Feller's account captures the optimism and energy that filled America after the War of 1812. His emphasis on Americans' confidence in the future and faith in improvement challenges historians who depict the Jacksonian temperament in terms of anxiety and foreboding. Jacksonian Promise opens with the Jubilee anniversary of Independence in 1826, when Americans celebrated their national birthright of liberty and opportunity. Blessed with abundant resources and what they held to be the best government on earth, citizens believed they could accomplish nearly anything. They felt it in their power to remake themselves, their country, and the world. Feller traces the influence of this enterprising spirit across a broad range of Jacksonian activity. Experiment and innovation flourished as Americans built canals and factories, founded unions and utopias, staged religious revivals and moral crusades, and campaigned to eradicate social ills and to purify law and politics. Yet despite their common source, competing programs of progress soon clashed with each other. As citizens organized to pursue their hopes for America's future, divisions arose among that pointed ultimately toward civil war.

A Patriot's History of the United States
A Patriot's History of the United States

Author: Larry Schweikart

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2004-12-29

Total Pages: 1350

ISBN-13: 1101217782

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For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.” As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin. A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.

Stealth Democracy
Stealth Democracy

Author: John R. Hibbing

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-08-29

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780521009867

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Americans often complain about the operation of their government, but scholars have never developed a complete picture of people's preferred type of government. In this provocative and timely book, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, employing an original national survey and focus groups, report the governmental procedures Americans desire. Contrary to the prevailing view that people want greater involvement in politics, most citizens do not care about most policies and therefore are content to turn over decision-making authority to someone else. People's wish for the political system is that decision makers be empathetic and, especially, non-self-interested, not that they be responsive and accountable to the people's largely nonexistent policy preferences or, even worse, that the people be obligated to participate directly in decision making. Hibbing and Theiss-Morse conclude by cautioning communitarians, direct democrats, social capitalists, deliberation theorists, and all those who think that greater citizen involvement is the solution to society's problems.

Hoosiers and the American Story
Hoosiers and the American Story

Author: Madison, James H.

Publisher: Indiana Historical Society

Published: 2014-10

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 0871953633

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A supplemental textbook for middle and high school students, Hoosiers and the American Story provides intimate views of individuals and places in Indiana set within themes from American history. During the frontier days when Americans battled with and exiled native peoples from the East, Indiana was on the leading edge of America’s westward expansion. As waves of immigrants swept across the Appalachians and eastern waterways, Indiana became established as both a crossroads and as a vital part of Middle America. Indiana’s stories illuminate the history of American agriculture, wars, industrialization, ethnic conflicts, technological improvements, political battles, transportation networks, economic shifts, social welfare initiatives, and more. In so doing, they elucidate large national issues so that students can relate personally to the ideas and events that comprise American history. At the same time, the stories shed light on what it means to be a Hoosier, today and in the past.

Challenging Authority
Challenging Authority

Author: Frances Fax Piven

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2008-07-11

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0742563405

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Argues that ordinary people exercise extraordinary political courage and power in American politics when, frustrated by politics as usual, they rise up in anger and hope, and defy the authorities and the status quo rules that ordinarily govern their daily lives. By doing so, they disrupt the workings of important institutions and become a force in American politics. Drawing on critical episodes in U.S. history, Piven shows that it is in fact precisely at those seismic moments when people act outside of political norms that they become empowered to their full democratic potential.

Stephen A. Douglas and Antebellum Democracy
Stephen A. Douglas and Antebellum Democracy

Author: Martin H. Quitt

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-09-24

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1139536931

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This thematic biography demonstrates how Stephen Douglas's path from a conflicted youth in Vermont to dim prospects in New York to overnight stardom in Illinois led to his identification with the Democratic Party and his belief that the federal government should respect the diversity of states and territories. His relationships with his mother, sister, teachers, brothers-in-law, other men and two wives are explored in depth. When he conducted the first cross-country campaign by a presidential candidate in American history, few among the hundreds of thousands that saw him in 1860 knew that his wife and he had just lost their infant daughter or that Douglas controlled a large Mississippi slave plantation. His story illuminates the gap between democracy then and today. The book draws on a variety of previously unexamined sources.