The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828–1861 (review)

In this, his first book, Yonatan Eyal argues that the Young America phenomenon of the antebellum period transformed the Democratic Party into an expansionistic, economically progressive, and internationally engaged organization. Defined by their “generational self-consciousness,” Young America Democrats (or New Democrats, as Eyal also refers to them) came of age in the 1840s as a politically precocious group (9). They dramatically altered the outlook and ideological content of the party they inherited (or, as this book implies, took over) from their Jacksonian forebears, pursuing continental expansion, promoting free trade and federal funding of internal improvements, and urging diplomatic support of democratic social movements abroad. They hoped that expansion, increased trade, and internal improvements would knit the nation more firmly together and counter the divisive tendencies of sectionalism within their party and the nation. Though Young America ultimately failed to preserve Democratic and national unity, they profoundly reshaped partisan conflict over economic issues and changed Americans’ perceptions of their country’s place in the larger world.

This book is a welcome challenge to the prevailing historiographical paradigm of partisan competition. For over fifty years, historians from Marvin Meyers to Michael Holt consistently have portrayed Jacksonian-era Democrats as embittered victims of the vast social and economic changes wrought by the Market Revolution. While they looked to the government to restrain the market, their Whig opponents sought to involve the government in the market’s growth. Eyal ably shows that Young America Democrats flouted this trend. He notes that their constituents clamored for government aid and improvements to help connect them to burgeoning markets. Far from being circumspect, they convinced New Democrats that the government could shape the economy to provide equal opportunity and preserve equal rights, principles that were at the heart of the Democratic creed. Indeed, Eyal claims that Young America’s efforts to provide equal opportunity in the marketplace meant that they, not Whigs, “symbolized the vanguard of social change” (145).

Ultimately, Young America’s efforts to forge a dynamic, rich, expanding nation succumbed to sectionalism and the coming of the Civil War. Eyal argues that Young America’s nationalist outlook actually kept the Democratic Party and the nation united longer than otherwise would have been possible in the face of increasing conflict over the place of slavery in the republic. He also acknowledges that Young Americans unwittingly contributed to that divisive conflict, through their support of the Mexican War and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, among other actions. However, Eyal echoes Michael Holt when he concludes that what doomed the Second American Party system was not necessarily the debate over slavery, but voter dissatisfaction with Democrats’ and Whigs’ increasing consensus on economic issues.

Eyal’s examination of the political impact of Young America is thorough, insightful, and impressive. Still, his argument that Young America transformed the Democratic Party into a more progressive, market-friendly organization raises some concerns. Older, conservative Democrats had pioneered such measures within the party as early as the 1830s. Those conservatives fell from grace during the Panic of 1837, but returned with a vengeance throughout the North by 1845. Indeed, Young America largely repackaged conservative Democrats’ familiar economic measures within a nationalist framework designed to achieve an “empire of commerce” (40). The book’s framework tends to obscure such competition to shape the party’s principles, not only between old conservatives and Young Americans but also between northerners and southerners. Northerners, especially New Yorkers, dominate this account of Young America, but the author does not investigate whether their economic principles were a critique of the agrarian South. Moreover, after secession, southern Democrats helped craft a Confederate constitution that explicitly forbade federal funding of internal improvements. Thus, one wonders if the national party was as thoroughly transformed by Young America as the book suggests. However, these concerns do not diminish what is a remarkable achievement in recovering the diversity of visionary and progressive ideals that...