Young America movement

Last updated
Advertisement for the clipper ship Young America Young America 1.jpg
Advertisement for the clipper ship Young America

The Young America Movement was an American political, cultural and literary movement in the mid-19th century. Inspired by European reform movements of the 1830s (such as Junges Deutschland, Young Italy and Young Hegelians), the American group was formed as a political organization in 1845 by Edwin de Leon and George Henry Evans. It advocated free trade, social reform, expansion westward and southward into the territories, and support for republican, anti-aristocratic movements abroad. The movement also inspired a drive for self-consciously "American" literature in writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman. It became a faction in the Democratic Party in the 1850s. Senator Stephen A. Douglas promoted its nationalistic program in an unsuccessful effort to compromise sectional differences. The breakup of the movement left many of its adherents discouraged and disillusioned.

Contents

John L. O'Sullivan described the general purpose of the Young America Movement in an 1837 editorial for the Democratic Review :

All history is to be re-written; political science and the whole scope of all moral truth have to be considered and illustrated in the light of the democratic principle. All old subjects of thought and all new questions arising, connected more or less directly with human existence, have to be taken up again and re-examined. [1]

Historian Edward L. Widmer places O'Sullivan and the Democratic Review in New York City at the center of the Young America Movement. In that sense, the movement can be considered mostly urban and middle class, but with a strong emphasis on socio-political reform for all Americans, especially given the burgeoning European immigrant population (particularly Irish Catholics) in New York in the 1840s.

Politics

John L. O'Sullivan (1874) John O'Sullivan.jpg
John L. O'Sullivan (1874)

Historian Yonatan Eyal argues that the 1840s and 1850s were the heyday of the faction of young Democrats that called itself "Young America". Led by Stephen Douglas, James K. Polk and Franklin Pierce, and New York financier August Belmont, this faction broke with the agrarian and strict constructionist orthodoxies of the past and embraced commerce, technology, regulation, reform, and internationalism. [2]

In economic policy Young America saw the necessity of a modern infrastructure of railroads, canals, telegraphs, turnpikes, and harbors; they endorsed the "Market Revolution" and promoted capitalism. They called for Congressional land grants to the states, which allowed Democrats to claim that internal improvements were locally rather than federally sponsored. Young America claimed that modernization would perpetuate the agrarian vision of Jeffersonian Democracy by allowing yeomen farmers to sell their products and therefore to prosper. They tied internal improvements to free trade, while accepting moderate tariffs as a necessary source of government revenue. They supported the Independent Treasury (the Jacksonian alternative to the Second Bank of the United States), not as a scheme to quash the special privilege of the Whiggish moneyed elite, but as a device to spread prosperity to all Americans. [3]

The movement's decline by 1856 was due to unsuccessful challenges to "old fogy" leaders like James Buchanan, to Douglas' failure to win the presidential nomination in 1852, to an inability to deal with the slavery issue, and to rising isolationism and disenchantment with reform in America. [4]

Manifest Destiny

When O'Sullivan coined the term "Manifest Destiny" in an 1845 article for the Democratic Review, he did not necessarily intend for American democracy to expand across the continent by force. In effect, the American democratic principle was to spread on its own, self-evident merits. The American exceptionalism often attached to O'Sullivan's "Manifest Destiny" was an 1850s perversion that can be attributed to what Widmer called "Young America II". [5] O'Sullivan even contended that American "democracy needed to expand in order to contain its ideological opponent (aristocracy)". [6] Unlike Europe, America had no aristocratic system or nobility against which Young America could define itself. [7]

Literature

Aside from Young America's promotion of Jacksonian Democracy in the Democratic Review, the movement also had a literary side. It attracted a circle of outstanding writers, including William Cullen Bryant, George Bancroft, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. They sought independence from European standards of high culture and wanted to demonstrate the excellence and "exceptionalism" of America's own literary tradition. Other writers of the movement included Evert Augustus Duyckinck, Cornelius Mathews, [8] It was Mathews that adopted the name for the movement. In a speech delivered June 30, 1845, he said:

Whatever that past generation of statesmen, law-givers and writers was capable of, we know. What they attained, what they failed to attain, we also know. Our duty and our destiny is another from theirs. Liking not at all its borrowed sound, we are yet (there is no better way to name it,) the Young America of the people: a new generation; and it is for us now to inquire, what we may have it in our power to accomplish, and on what objects the world may reasonably ask that we should fix our regards. [9]

One of Young America's intellectual vehicles was the literary journal Arcturus. Herman Melville in his book Mardi (1849) refers to it by naming a ship in the book Arcturion and observing that it was "exceedingly dull", and that its crew had a low literary level. [10] The North American Review referred to the movement as "at war with good taste". [11]

Hudson River School

The Course of Empire: The Savage State by Thomas Cole (1836) Cole Thomas The Course of Empire The Savage State 1836.jpg
The Course of Empire: The Savage State by Thomas Cole (1836)

Apart from literature, there was a distinct element of art associated with the Young America Movement. In the 1820s and 1830s, American artists such as Asher B. Durand and Thomas Cole began to emerge. They were heavily influenced by romanticism, which resulted in numerous paintings involving the physical landscape. But it was William Sidney Mount who had connections to the writers of the Democratic Review. And as a contemporary of the Hudson River School, he sought to use art in the promotion of the American democratic principle. O'Sullivan's cohort at the Review, E. A. Duyckinck, was particularly "eager to launch an ancillary artistic movement" that supplemented Young America. [12]

Young America II

In late 1851, the Democratic Review was acquired by George Nicholas Sanders. Similar to O'Sullivan, Sanders believed in the inherent value of a literary-political relationship, whereby literature and politics could be combined and used as an instrument for socio-political progress. Although he "brought O'Sullivan back into the fold as an editor", the periodical's "jingoism achieved an even higher pitch than O'Sullivan's [original] dog-whistle stridency". [13] Even Democratic Representative John C. Breckinridge remarked in 1852:

The Democratic Review has been heretofore not a partisan paper, but a periodical that was supposed to represent the whole Democratic Party ... I have observed recently a very great change. [14]

The change in tone and partisanship in the Democratic Review that Breckinridge referred to was mostly a reaction by the increasingly divided Democratic Party to the growth of the Free Soil movement, which threatened to dissolve any semblance of Democratic unity that remained.

Rise of Labor Republicanism

By the mid-1850s, Free Soil Democrats (those who followed David Wilmot and his Proviso) and anti-slavery Whigs had combined to form the Republican Party. Young America's New York Democrats who opposed slavery saw an opportunity to express their abolitionist sentiments. As a result, Horace Greeley's New York Tribune began to replace the Democratic Review as the central outlet for Young America's ever-evolving politics. In fact, Greeley's Tribune became a major advocate of not only abolition, but also of land and labor reform. [15]

The combined cause of land and labor reform was perhaps best exemplified by George Henry Evans' National Reform Association (NRA). In 1846, Evans stated:

National Reformers did not consider the Freedom of the Soil a panacea for every social and political wrong, but a necessary step in progress which would greatly facilitate all desirable reform, and without which no plan of reform could prevent the downward course of labor. [16]

Eventually, former members of the radical Locofoco faction in the Democratic Party recognized the potential for reorganizing New York City's labor system around principles such as the common good. [17] In contrast to the Europe in the days of the 1848 revolutions, America had no aristocratic establishment against which Young America could define itself in protest. [18]

See also

Citations

  1. Widmer, p. 3.
  2. Yonatan Eyal, The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828–1861, (2007)
  3. Eyal, The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828–1861, p. 79
  4. David B. Danbom, "The Young America Movement," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Sept 1974, Vol. 67 Issue 3, pp. 294–306
  5. Widmer, p. 189.
  6. Widmer, p. 217.
  7. William Doyle (2009). Aristocracy and its Enemies in the Age of Revolution. Oxford UP. p. 135. ISBN   978-0-19-156827-5.
  8. Duberman, Martin (1966). James Russell Lowell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 50. OCLC   460118260.
  9. Widmer, p. 57.
  10. Andrew Delbanco, Melville, His World and Work. (2005) p. 93.
  11. Widmer, p. 110.
  12. Widmer, p. 126. Many elements of the Hudson River School were closely aligned with the Whig party as well. And while some Hudson River School artists celebrated the use of property and the upward trajectory of civilization, others, like Thomas Cole had concern over the course of democracy. See, e.g., Alfred L. Brophy, Property and Progress; Antebellum Landscape Art and Property Law, McGeorge Law Review 40 (2009): 601.
  13. Widmer, p. 189.
  14. Widmer, p. 189.
  15. Lause, pp. 118–19.
  16. Lause, p. 35.
  17. Lause, p. 119.
  18. Ralph C. Hancock; L. Gary Lambert (1996). The Legacy of the French Revolution. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 222. ISBN   9780847678426.

Cited sources

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Socialist Party of America</span> 1901–1972 United States political party

The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of America who had split from the main organization in 1899.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacksonian democracy</span> 19th-century American political philosophy

Jacksonian democracy was a 19th-century political philosophy in the United States that expanded suffrage to most white men over the age of 21 and restructured a number of federal institutions. Originating with the seventh U.S. president, Andrew Jackson and his supporters, it became the nation's dominant political worldview for a generation. The term itself was in active use by the 1830s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John L. O'Sullivan</span> American columnist and politician (1813–1895)

John Louis O'Sullivan was an American columnist, editor, and diplomat who coined the term "manifest destiny" in 1845 to promote the annexation of Texas and the Oregon Country to the United States. O'Sullivan was an influential political writer and advocate for the Democratic Party at that time and served as U.S. minister to Portugal during the administration of President Franklin Pierce (1853–1857).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Progressive Era</span> Turn-of-the-century political reform movement

The Progressive Era (1901–1929) was a period in the United States during the early 20th century of widespread social activism and political reform across the country. Progressives sought to address the problems caused by rapid industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption as well as the enormous concentration of industrial ownership in monopolies. Progressive reformers were alarmed by the spread of slums, poverty, and the exploitation of labor. Multiple overlapping progressive movements fought perceived social, political, and economic ills by advancing democracy, scientific methods, and professionalism; regulating business; protecting the natural environment; and improving working and living conditions of the urban poor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Young Italy</span> 1831–1848 Italian pro-unification political movement

Young Italy was an Italian political movement founded in 1831 by Giuseppe Mazzini. After a few months of leaving Italy, in June 1831, Mazzini wrote a letter to King Charles Albert of Sardinia, in which he asked him to unite Italy and lead the nation. A month later, convinced that his demands did not reach the king, he founded the movement in Marseille. It would then spread out to other nations across Europe. The movement's goal was to create a united Italian republic through promoting a general insurrection in the Italian reactionary states and in the lands occupied by the Austrian Empire. Mazzini's belief was that a popular uprising would create a unified Italy. The slogan that defined the movement's aim was "Union, Strength, and Liberty". The phrase could be found in the tricolor Italian flag, which represented the country's unity.

The American Renaissance period in American literature ran from about 1830 to around the Civil War. A central term in American studies, the American Renaissance was for a while considered synonymous with American Romanticism and was closely associated with Transcendentalism.

The Democratic Party is one of the two major political parties of the United States political system and the oldest active political party in the country as well as in the world. The Democratic Party was founded in 1828. It is also the oldest active voter-based political party in the world. The party has changed significantly during its nearly two centuries of existence. Once known as the party of the "common man," the early Democratic Party stood for individual rights and state sovereignty, and opposed banks and high tariffs. In the first decades of its existence, from 1832 to the mid-1850s, under Presidents Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and James K. Polk, the Democrats usually bested the opposition Whig Party by narrow margins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Second Party System</span> Phase in U.S. electoral politics (1828–1852)

The Second Party System was the political party system operating in the United States from about 1828 to 1852, after the First Party System ended. The system was characterized by rapidly rising levels of voter interest, beginning in 1828, as demonstrated by Election Day turnouts, rallies, partisan newspapers, and high degrees of personal loyalty to parties.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Third Party System</span> Phase in U.S. electoral politics (1856–1896)

The Third Party System was a period in the history of political parties in the United States from the 1850s until the 1890s, which featured profound developments in issues of American nationalism, modernization, and race. This period was marked by the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of slavery in the United States, followed by the Reconstruction era and the Gilded Age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evert Augustus Duyckinck</span> American journalist

Evert Augustus Duyckinck was an American publisher and biographer. He was associated with the literary side of the Young America movement in New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Factions in the Democratic Party (United States)</span> List of political factions within the U.S. Democratic Party

The Democratic Party of the United States is a party composed of various factions. The liberal faction supports modern liberalism that began with the New Deal in the 1930s and continued with both the New Frontier and Great Society in the 1960s. The moderate faction supports Third Way politics that includes center-left social policies and centrist fiscal policies. The progressive faction supports progressivism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cornelius Mathews</span> American dramatist

Cornelius Mathews was an American writer, best known for his crucial role in the formation of a literary group known as Young America in the late 1830s, with editor Evert Duyckinck and author William Gilmore Simms. He is most well known for believing Adam and Eve to be microbes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parke Godwin (journalist)</span> United States journalist (1816–1904)

Parke Godwin was an American journalist associated with New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Militant faction</span>

The Militant faction was an organized grouping of Marxists in the Socialist Party of America (SPA) who sought to steer that organization from its orientation towards electoral politics and towards direct action and revolutionary socialism. The faction emerged during 1930 and 1931 and achieved practical control of the organization in 1934. The existence of the "Militants" and the threat they represented to the political line of the SPA caused traditional electorally oriented members to form an organized grouping of their own, known as the "Old Guard faction." In 1935 the personal and political friction between these two basic tendencies lead to an organizational split, with the Old Guard faction leaving to establish the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). The Militant faction itself shattered in the aftermath of the 1935 party split with only a small core loyal to perennial Presidential candidate Norman Thomas remaining in the organization by the coming of World War II.

Progressivism is a political philosophy and movement that seeks to advance the human condition through social reform – primarily based on purported advancements in social organization, science, and technology. Adherents hold that progressivism has universal application and endeavor to spread this idea to human societies everywhere. Progressivism arose during the Age of Enlightenment out of the belief that civility in Europe was improving due to the application of new empirical knowledge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hawthorne and His Mosses</span> 1850 essay and critical review by Herman Melville

"Hawthorne and His Mosses" (1850) is an essay and critical review by Herman Melville of the short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1846. Published pseudonymously by "a Virginian spending July in Vermont", it appeared in The Literary World magazine in two issues: August 17 and August 24, 1850. It has been called the "most famous literary manifesto of the American nineteenth century."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Locofocos</span> Short-lived United States Democratic Party faction

The Locofocos were a faction of the Democratic Party in American politics that existed from 1835 until the mid-1840s.

<i>The United States Magazine and Democratic Review</i>

The United States Magazine and Democratic Review was a periodical published from 1837 to 1859 by John L. O'Sullivan. Its motto, "The best government is that which governs least", was famously paraphrased by Henry David Thoreau in "Resistance to Civil Government", better known as Civil Disobedience, and is often erroneously attributed to Thomas Jefferson.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1880 Greenback National Convention</span> US political convention

The 1880 Greenback Party National Convention convened in Chicago from June 9 to June 11 to select presidential and vice presidential nominees and write a party platform for the Greenback Party in the United States presidential election 1880. Delegates chose James B. Weaver of Iowa for President and Barzillai J. Chambers of Texas for Vice President.

The New Left was a broad political movement that emerged from the counterculture of the 1960s and continued through the 1970s. It consisted of activists in the Western world who, in reaction to the era's liberal establishment, campaigned for freer lifestyles on a broad range of social issues such as feminism, gay rights, drug policy reforms, and gender relations. The New Left differs from the traditional left in that it tended to acknowledge the struggle for various forms of social justice, whereas previous movements prioritized explicitly economic goals. However, many have used the term "New Left" to describe an evolution, continuation, and revitalization of traditional leftist goals.