Young America II
In late 1851, the Democratic Review was acquired by George Nicholas Sanders. Similar to O'Sullivan, Sanders believed in the inherent value of a literary-political relationship, whereby literature and politics could be combined and used as an instrument for socio-political progress. And although he "brought O'Sullivan back into the fold as an editor," the periodical's "jingoism achieved an even higher pitch than O'Sullivan's dog-whistle stridency." Even Democratic Representative John C. Breckinridge remarked in 1852:
The Democratic Review has been heretofore not a partisan paper, but a periodical that was supposed to represent the whole Democratic Party... I have observed recently a very great change.
The change in tone and partisanship in the Democratic Review that Breckinridge referred to was mostly a reaction by the increasingly divided Democratic Party to the growth of the Free Soil movement, which threatened to dissolve any semblance of Democratic unity that remained.
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