The Young Americans were New York’s next generation of artists, intellectuals, and activists, and reformers, many of whom were inspired by the Loco-Foco movement, which challenged Tammany Hall for supremacy in the Democratic Party from 1835 to 1837. Their philosophies generally came from the great classical liberals, radicals like Tom Paine and William Leggett, equal in stature to most Young Americans, and they shared a deep faith in America’s world historical destiny. A Young American might have been in either party, but their philosophy [00:03:00] was almost always some strain of Loco-Focoism.

Further Reading:

Comegna, “Art as Ideas: Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire” and “The Artist as Exemplar: Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life”

John L. O’Sullivan, “The Great Nation of Futurity”

Tymn, Marshall, ed. Thomas Cole’s Poetry: The Collected Poems of America’s Foremost Painter of the Hudson River School Reflecting His Feelings for Nature and the Romantic Spirit of the Nineteenth Century. York, PA: Liberty Cap Books. 1972.

Walt Whitman’s “Democratic Vistas”

Widmer, Edward. Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City. New York: Oxford University Press. 1999.

Music by Kai Engel

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