| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828–1861. By Yonatan Eyal. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xii, 252 pp. $75.00, ISBN 978-0-521-87564-6.)

Yonatan Eyal's premise is that the Young America movement

exercised a powerful, cohesive influence on the Democratic Party ... heading off party division and national disunion. In other respects, Young America Democrats helped to cause secession, though overall they aided in preserving the Democracy and the Union. (p. 227)

Yet, in designating President James K. Polk as "the first 'young Democrat'" to occupy the White House, he offers counterevidence (p. 127). Polk divided the nation through his conquest of the northern half of antislavery Mexico that secured slaveholding Texas. This immoral and illegal invasion sent Henry David Thoreau to the woods after he went to jail in protest. Meanwhile, other Young Americans called for the annexation of Ireland and Canada (p. 98).

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