American Democrat, or Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of
Item #76649
COOPER, James Fenimore. The American Democrat, or Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America. Cooperstown: H. & E. Phinney, 1838. 192pp. 12mo. Publisher's purple embossed cloth, paper spine label. Ownership inscriptions on front free endpaper and p.100. Cloth sunned and soiled, spine ends chipped, spine label partially perished, a few ink spots on spine. Small tears to endpapers. Internally clean. About very good overall. First edition (BAL label variant A) of one of novelist James Fenimore Cooper's more intriguing commentaries on American democracy. Cooper had moved his family to Europe in 1826 in an effort to bolster his income and bestow a better education on his children. He returned to the U.S. in 1833 to find the country much changed in the wake of the Jacksonian "revolution." Finding his political works attacked both at home and abroad, he responded with several pieces critiquing American tendencies to defer to foreign opinion on national policy and on the dangers of an irresponsible press (he was regularly the victim of libelous attacks by journalists). While Cooper's earlier writing was optimistic, he adopts a more ominous tone here, explaining that he prefers "a democracy to any other system, on account of its comparative advantages, and not on account of its perfection." In the time he was away, he observes that civil discourse has declined substantially, with one party achieving "its ends by fulsome, false and meretricious eulogiums, in which it does not itself believe, and the other giving utterance to its discontent in useless and unmanly complaints."Cooper explains that this work "is written more in the spirit of censure than of praise, for its aim is correction." This is a significant work by one of the most important writers of the 19th century. BAL 3880. HOWES C745. AMERICAN IMPRINTS 49899. SPILLER & BLACKBURN 25. SABIN 16412.
Price: $950.00