John L. O'Sullivan and his times / Robert D. Sampson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sampson, Robert, 1949-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

O'Sullivan, John L. (John Louis), 1813-1895.

O'Sullivan, John L.

Journalists--United States--Biography.

Journalists.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xvi, 304 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Kent, Ohio : Kent State University Press, [2003]

Summary:

The life of nineteenth-century journalist, diplomat, adventurer, and enthusiast for lost causes John Louis O'Sullivan is usually glimpsed only in brief episodes, perhaps because the components of his life are sometimes contradictory. An exponent of romantic democracy, O'Sullivan became a defender of slavery. A champion of reforms for women, labor, criminals, and public schools, he ended his life promoting spiritualism. This first full-length biography reveals a man possessed of the idealism and promise, as well as the prejudices and follies, of his age, a man who sensed the revolutionary and liberating potential of radical democracy but who was unable to acknowledge the racial barriers it had to cross to fulfill its promise.

Sure to be welcomed by scholars of the Jacksonian era and others interested in nineteenth-century American history, John L. O'Sullivan and His Times presents an indepth examination of O'Sullivan's ideas as they were expressed in the Democratic Review and other newspapers and literary magazines he edited. O'Sullivan was a crusader whose efforts to end capital punishment came within a hair's breadth of ending the practice of hanging convicts in New York. As an editor, he called down the wrath of the people on speculators and promoters of privilege and monopoly and eloquently praised the virtues of majority rule and the citizens' right to control and transform their government. He was a political operative who supported the radical wing of the Democratic party, battled nativists, and plotted strategy with a young Samuel J. Tilden, and was a promoter of a fresh American literature who significantly aided Nathaniel Hawthorne's career and familiarized his readers with the works of Whitman, Poe, Whittier, and Thoreau.

Through extensive research of primary materials -- including contemporary correspondence and journals of public figures such as Martin Van Buren, William Marcy, Benjamin F. Butler, Samuel Tilden, and James K. Polk -- author Robert D. Sampson explores the many facets of this enigmatic figure, a man described by Hawthorne as "one of the truest and best men in the world."

Contents:

Prologue: A Relic Passes xiii

1 Inheriting a Romantic Legacy 1

2 Founding the Democratic Review 15

3 Battling Banks and the Panic 27

4 Friends and Offended Democrats 48

5 Defining Democracy 73

6 Pursuing Reform 89

7 Defending Democracy 112

8 The Democratic Review and the Politics of Rededication 140

9 The Pinnacle 163

10 The Fall 194

11 Journey to Obscurity 208

Epilogue: The "most indistinct ghost of them all" 239.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-294) and index.

ISBN:

0873387457

OCLC:

48965060