First published 1998
Edward L. Widmer traces the rise and fall of Young America, a bold intellectual movement that emerged from Jacksonian democracy. The group centered around John O'Sullivan, the charismatic editor of the Democratic Review, who coined the term "Manifest Destiny" and gathered ambitious writers in bustling New York City. These ultra-democratic thinkers believed they could expand American frontiers in politics, literature, and art. O'Sullivan's magazine championed early works by Hawthorne and Whitman, while Melville observed and critiqued the movement's excesses. The Young Americans proclaimed they would rewrite history through their aggressive promotion of democratic ideals. Instead, their constant agitation contributed to the tensions that sparked the Civil War. Widmer provides the first full biography of O'Sullivan and argues that Manifest Destiny represented part of a larger intellectual expansion across nineteenth-century America. The book reveals how a generation's soaring ambitions collided with the nation's darker realities.
Genres: biography, history, literary-criticism, american, non-fiction, 19th-century, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: intellectual-movement, rise-and-fall
Setting: New York City
Period: 19th-century
300 pages · Hardcover · Oxford University Press