John L. O'Sullivan and his times
"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 citizen's right to control and transform their government." "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.""--BOOK JACKET
Print Book, English, ©2003
Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, ©2003
Biography
xvi, 304 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
9780873387453, 0873387457
48965060
Inheriting a romantic legacy
Founding the Democratic Review
Battling banks and the panic
Friends and offended democrats
Defining democracy
Pursuing reform
Defending democracy
The Democratic Review and the politics of rededication
The pinnacle
The fall
Journey to obscurity
Epilogue: The "most indistinct ghost of them all."