Hawthorne, Nathaniel; Lowell, J. R.; et al. The United States Magazine and Democratic Review. New Series, Volume V. 1839. Washington DC: Langtree & O'Sullivan, 1839. First Edition. Six issues bound, January-June, 1839. [9410]
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., 618 clean pp., tight, with 1 engraving. The spine of this volume was sometime covered in either thin paper or thin cloth, with the original backstrip seen underneath. Good. Leather bound.
The engraving is of Benjamin F. Butler.
Contents include
The New York Election; The Canada Question; Benjamin F. Butler; The Future Life, by William Cullen Bryant; Tales of the Province-House, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Esq.; The Trials of Woman; Channing on "Self-Culture"; Tadmor of the Wilderness; Early American Travels: Father Hennepin; Revolutionary Reminiscences of an Old Soldier; Original of the National Melody, "Yankee Doodle," by Porson Junior; Madison, and the Madison Papers; Glances at Congress; Western Virginia; Public Currency; The Twenty-fifth Congress; The Sun of the Constitution; The Fountain, by William Cullen Bryant; Sonnet - Andrew Jackson' America and the Early English Poets; Ode: For the Fiftieth Anniversary of Washington's Inauguration, by William Cullen Bryant; Recent American Poetry; Song to Alice; Index.
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.
