Hawthorne, Nathaniel; Lowell, J. R.; et al. The United States Magazine and Democratic Review. New Series, Volume VI. 1839. Washington DC: Langtree & O'Sullivan, 1839. First Edition. Six issues bound, July-December, 1839. [9411]
Full leather, outer hinges fine, 8 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches, spine dark with crazing & light surface loss, black leather title & volume no. labels in gilt. iv., 540 pp., tight. Good. Leather bound.
This volume calls for an engraving of William Leggett. It was not included here, but is in the volume that has January, 1840, Volume VII.
Contents include
Philadelphia Banking; William Leggett; Anthon's School Classics; Revolutionary Reminiscences of an Old Soldier (Parts 2 & 3); Sonnets, by Park Benjamin, Esq.; American Women; Sonnet: The Lost Child, by Mrs. Da Ponte; To a Dying Infant; The Taste for Poetry; The Spartan Mother. By the Rev. J. H. Clinch; The Treasure Digger; The Last English Tourist in America; Poems by William Cullen Bryant; The Projected Ship Canal to Connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; The Dissolution of the Whig Party; William Leggett, by William Cullen Bryant; The Duty of the Democratic Party; Meditation on a Grove; New York City vs. New York State; Songs of the Passions.
The United States Magazine and Democratic Review was published from 1837 to 1859, it's motto "The best government is that which governs least" has been erroneously attributed to Thomas Jefferson. The ideals of Jefferson were promoted by the periodical, with its support of Jacksonian Democracy being built on that foundation. It was a counterpart to the North American Review, a Federalist/Whig periodical. It was outspoken in the topics of the Mexican War, slavery, states' rights, and Indian removal. It was in this periodical that the term "Manifest Destiny" was first used. It was edited by Jon L. O'Sullivan and Samuel D. Langtree. The volumes of this series are a brilliant presentation of literature and politics in the years before the American Civil War.
The Magazine promoted American writers, printing some of the earliest writings of such luminaries as Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, J. G. Whittier, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, H. W. Longfellow, and James Russell Lowell.