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The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828-1861. By Yonatan Eyal. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. 264. Cloth $75.00.)
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...