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. And 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 dog-whistle stridency." 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.
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.
Read more about this topic: Young America Movement
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“We see young men who owe us a new world, so readily and lavishly they promise, but they never acquit the debt; they die young and dodge the account: or if they live, they lose themselves in the crowd.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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