The United States Magazine and Democratic Review. Volume VIII. 1840. Washington DC: S. D. Langtree, 1840. First Edition. [8013]
Six issues bound, July-December, 1840.
Full leather, outer hinges fine, 5 1/2 x 8 3/4 inches, spine dark with crazing & light surface loss, black leather title & volume no. labels in gilt. iv., 538 clean pp., tight, with 1 engraved portrait. Wrappers not included. Good.
Contents include
Guizot's Essay on Washington
Carlyle's Chartism
The Mineral Lands of the United States
On the Elevation of the Laboring Portion of Society, by William Channing
The Progress of Society
American Aristocracy
The Burial of Hernando de Soto
The Presidential Contest
The Present Condition of Greece
Reminiscences of the Last Sixty-Five Years, commencing with the Battle of Lexington, by E. S. Thomas
Theory of Legislation. By Jeremy Bentham
The History and Moral Relations of Political Economy
Two Years Before the Mast
A Lay Sermon at Sea
The Late Election
American Poetry
Social Destiny of Man
A Vindication of Classical Studies
Full page steel engravings: Henry D. Gilpin, Attorney General of the United States.
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.