In the October 1837 inaugural issue of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, an antebellum journal dedicated to strengthening democracy in politics and literature, the editor John O'Sullivan (1813–1895) expressed the democratic thrust of the era when he announced that "all history has to be re-written; political science and the whole scope of all moral truth have to be considered and illustrated in the light of the democratic principle" (p. 14). In the early decades of the nineteenth century, the "democratic principle" was defined by a resurgence of interest in the promises of the Declaration of Independence as the foundational statement of American freedom, liberty, and equality. The Democratic Review, as it was more commonly called, saw the creation of a national literature as the most "potent influence" (p. 14) in reviving the principles of democracy and in advancing America as a nation that might realize...