The Virgin Vote: How Young Americans Made Democracy Social, Politics Personal, and Voting Popular in the Nineteenth Century

by Jon Grinspan

Overview

There was a time when young people were the most passionate participants in American democracy. In the second half of the nineteenth century — as voter turnout reached unprecedented peaks — young people led the way, hollering, fighting, and flirting at massive midnight rallies. Parents trained their children to be “violent little partisans,” while politicians lobbied twenty-one-year-olds for their “virgin votes”—the first ballot cast upon reaching adulthood. In schoolhouses, saloons, and squares, young men and women proved that democracy is social and politics is personal, earning their adulthood by participating in public life.

Drawing on hundreds of diaries and letters of diverse young Americans — from barmaids to belles, sharecroppers to cowboys — this book explores how exuberant young people and scheming party bosses relied on each other from the 1840s to the turn of the twentieth century. It also explains why this era ended so dramatically and asks if aspects of that strange period might be useful today.

In a vivid evocation of this formative but forgotten world, Jon Grinspan recalls a time when struggling young citizens found identity and maturity in democracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469627359
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/13/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	264
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Jon Grinspan is a historian of American democracy, youth, and popular culture. He is curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and a frequent contributor to the New York Times.
Jon Grinspan is a historian of American democracy, youth, and popular culture. He is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and a frequent contributor to the New York Times.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

In an age when politics often seems remote from the lives and concerns of young people, Jon Grinspan recovers a lost world of youthful engagement with American public life. His colorful and energetic prose captures the spirit of the half century when young men and young women from all classes and ethnicities cared passionately about politics. Grinspan tells the story without nostalgia but with affection and respect for these young Americans.—Edward L. Ayers, author of In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civil War in the Heart of America

A captivating book that illumines an unexamined dimension of American political history. Grinspan sheds light on the meaning of voting for young people in the nineteenth century and the diverse ways—social, psychological, and political—in which youth were drawn to the ballot box and to activism in an era when politics was a popular sport. The details are rich, and the contrasts to the present are striking.—Alexander Keyssar, author of The Right to Vote: the Contested History of Democracy in the United States

Vividly written and persuasively argued, The Virgin Vote illuminates the parallel development of nineteenth-century political parties on a national scale with the recruitment of eager young people as essential political actors. Eloquent and insightful, Jon Grinspan recovers a lost world of political engagement as popular entertainment, which inspired voters and sustained democracy."—Alan Taylor, author of The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832

The Virgin Vote vividly captures just how immersive politics could be in the wide-open nineteenth century, especially for the young people who constituted such a large and noisy part of the electorate. In our era of rising indifference to big-money politics, it is bracing to be reminded how deep the passions ran when democracy was close to a contact sport.—Ted Widmer, author of Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City and editor of Disunion: Modern Historians Revisit and Reconsider the Civil War from Lincoln's Election to the Emancipation Proclamation

This sprightly, well-researched book is a delight to read and notably thought-provoking. By recasting what has been called the golden age of American democracy in terms of youth or age rather than partisanship itself, The Virgin Vote tells a story about youth that is not just about a single cohort or a cultural moment, but captures a wide array of cultural and political phenomena from 1840 to 1900. It's Piaget meets political history, and it seems long overdue.—David Waldstreicher, City University of New York

Editorial Reviews

“A period chronicled in vivid and loving detail. . . . Plunges readers into a pulsating political culture long vanished.” — Wall Street Journal

“Correlates changes in youthful political socialization with the widely lamented decline from high nineteenth-century young voter turnout to today’s low participation rates. . . . Makes an original and compelling argument that youth’s changing role was a critical factor.” — Journal of American History

“An imaginative and suggestive study that places American political history in a broad social context.” — American Historical Review

“Provid[es] new insight into the history of politics and that of youth. . . . Engagingly written, peopled with varied archival voices, and would work well in classrooms at the undergraduate or graduate level.” — Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

“Will be informative for historians and political scientists and enjoyable for the general reader. . . . Reveals important aspects of American political life from that 'foreign country' that is the past.” — North Carolina Historical Review

“A useful historical look at how strong the youth demographic can be.” — Kirkus Reviews

“This important book makes clear that we need a modern version of the Wide Awake movement.” — Vox

“[A] pithy and thought-provoking work. . . . Offer[s] a sensitive and illuminating overview of the vital role of young voters in America’s nascent political party system.” — Civil War Book Review

“Mining the diaries and letters of young Americans, the author creates revealing vignettes of 19th century politics and American youth. Recommended.” — CHOICE

“Readers will learn about some of the forces that brought Abraham Lincoln to office and shaped the United States’ post-Civil War political scene.” — Civil War News

From the Publisher

2017 Smithsonian Secretary’s Research Prize, Winner