Young America: The Transformation of Nationalism before the Civil War

The Young Americans were a nationalist movement within the Democratic Party made up of writers and politicians associated with the New York periodical, the Democratic Review. In this revealing book, Mark Power Smith explores the ways in which–in dialogue with its critics–the movement forged contrasting visions of American nationalism in the decades leading up to the Civil War.

Frustrated, fifty years after independence, by Britain’s political and cultural influence on the United States, the...