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The Virgin Vote: How Young Americans Made Democracy Social, Politics Personal, and Voting Popular in the Nineteenth Century Kindle Edition

by Jon Grinspan (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.6 18 ratings

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There was a time when young people were the most passionate participants in American democracy. In the second half of the nineteenth century--as voter turnout reached unprecedented peaks--young people led the way, hollering, fighting, and flirting at massive midnight rallies. Parents trained their children to be "violent little partisans," while politicians lobbied twenty-one-year-olds for their "virgin votes"—the first ballot cast upon reaching adulthood. In schoolhouses, saloons, and squares, young men and women proved that democracy is social and politics is personal, earning their adulthood by participating in public life.

Drawing on hundreds of diaries and letters of diverse young Americans--from barmaids to belles, sharecroppers to cowboys--this book explores how exuberant young people and scheming party bosses relied on each other from the 1840s to the turn of the twentieth century. It also explains why this era ended so dramatically and asks if aspects of that strange period might be useful today.

In a vivid evocation of this formative but forgotten world, Jon Grinspan recalls a time when struggling young citizens found identity and maturity in democracy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Will be informative for historians and political scientists and enjoyable for the general reader. . . . Reveals important aspects of American political life from that 'foreign country' that is the past.--North Carolina Historical Review

Correlates changes in youthful political socialization with the widely lamented decline from high nineteenth-century young voter turnout to today's low participation rates. . . . Makes an original and compelling argument that youth's changing role was a critical factor.--Journal of American History

An imaginative and suggestive study that places American political history in a broad social context.--American Historical Review

Readers will learn about some of the forces that brought Abraham Lincoln to office and shaped the United States' post-Civil War political scene.--Civil War News

This important book makes clear that we need a modern version of the Wide Awake movement.--Vox

Provid[es] new insight into the history of politics and that of youth. . . . Engagingly written, peopled with varied archival voices, and would work well in classrooms at the undergraduate or graduate level.--Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

[A] period chronicled in vivid and loving detail. . . . Plunges readers into a pulsating political culture long vanished.--Wall Street Journal

A useful historical look at how strong the youth demographic can be.--Kirkus Reviews

[A] pithy and thought-provoking work. . . . Offer[s] a sensitive and illuminating overview of the vital role of young voters in America's nascent political party system.--Civil War Book Review

Mining the diaries and letters of young Americans, the author creates revealing vignettes of 19th century politics and American youth. Recommended.--CHOICE

About the Author

Jon Grinspan is a historian of American democracy, youth, and popular culture. He is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History and a frequent contributor to the New York Times.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B015ZTG3MO
Publisher ‏ : ‎ The University of North Carolina Press; Illustrated edition (February 13, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 13, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5332 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 260 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1469654741

Best Sellers Rank: #1,922,070 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #137 in Gilded Age History of the U.S.
- #878 in Reconstruction History of the U.S.
- #3,369 in Elections

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4.6 18 ratings

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Bryan Pfaffenberger

Not a scholarly tome -- beautifully written and engaging

Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2019

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During most of the nineteenth century, American voters turned out in massive numbers, with as many as 90 percent or more of the electorate casting their votes. For young voters, the "virgin vote" -- the first vote cast by a new voter -- was a rite of passage to becoming a full member of a riotously vibrant political culture... one that is almost unimaginable today. To be sure, the vote was restricted to men in those days, but young women were aware and involved in politics, to the point of raising questions about an engagement if Mr. Virgin Vote didn't come home and cast his vote for the favored party. Author Jon Grisman tells this story in an approachable, engaging style, bringing nineteenth century youth voices to the fore with a minimum of academic fuss. (The footnotes and scholarly debates are there, should you want them, in a lengthy appendix.) This vibrant 19th century political culture came to an abrupt end, however, in the mid-1890s -- thanks, Grisman believes, to the introduction to the Australian ballot system, which took all the drama, fun, and engagement out of the act of casting a ballot. And as youths deserted the polls, turnout dropped dramatically, reaching the levels still seen today, in which a turnout of fifty to sixty percent is considered pretty good. The 19th century youngsters Grisman discusses come alive through their letters. This is a marvelous work of historical scholarship, one that brings the past to life. Highly recommended for all readers, not just historians.

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Amazon Customer

Great read

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2022

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The book is very accessible and a flow to understanding what it meant to vote before the 19th and 20th century. The transition of voting and it’s new found meaning or there’s no longer a reason to vote

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Luke Avedon

Reads like a thriller

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2016

Verified Purchase

Reads like a thriller

This was one of the most entertaining (and fascinating) history books I ever did read.

The problem with most history books I pick up is they are just "one damn fact after another". Not here. Each section is different story where you meet fascinating characters. You feel like you are really there...in that time with those people.
Still, I learned something new on every page.

I came out of the book both more cynical and optimistic. You get to see a good balance between the excitement of democracy, the ignorance of the mob, the rise of the political machine.

6 people found this helpful

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Janet Schrader

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2017

Verified Purchase

arrived in wonderful condition. As expected

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Daniel W. Crofts

The “Virgin Vote”—then and now

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2016

Imagine this. You spend the summer of 2015 completing a book about young people and American electoral politics during the nineteenth century. You shepherd the final manuscript through all the hoops—rewrites, illustrations, credits, page proof, index, and so on.

Then just as the book appears in the spring of 2016, a tectonic change may be taking place. Many young voters have roused themselves and swarmed into the Democratic Party primaries. Whether or not their candidate succeeds, the “youth vote” suddenly has become tangible. We need an historian to provide background!

Jon Grinspan, the apparent clairvoyant, calls attention to a very different world of “popular politics” that flourished from 1840 to around 1900. Amid a “cultural earthquake” of unprecedented social and economic upheaval, a nation of farmers transformed itself into an urban-industrial colossus (132). Political parties made themselves vehicles for boisterous mass participation and nurtured huge voter turnouts. They offered “scaffolding” and “structure” to people swept along in the whirlwind of relentless change. In particular, they offered first-time voters “a rickety bridge to adulthood” (10, 137). And they counted on young hustlers to rouse the faithful and make sure they got to the polls.

Party managers were especially eager to capture the “virgin vote” because they knew that a “lifelong commitment” hung in the balance. A twenty-one year old who voted Republican (or Democratic) would probably maintain “partisan monogamy” for the rest of his life (125). These allegiances reflected, and were reinforced, by ethnic, religious, and racial identities. An Irish Catholic was destined to become a Democrat; a former slave clung to the party of Lincoln.

Grinspan cleverly contends that nineteenth-century America gave young people few chances to acquire peer-group identity. Instead, it demanded that children rouse themselves and become adults—by leaving home, by going to work, or by joining the army. The “old institutions of a settled, rural economy fell apart” before they were supplanted by “the structures that shaped life after 1900, like schools, corporations, and unions” (41). Young people, caught between the past and the future, sought to make connections with each and also tried to act as adults and to win adult approval. So they were drawn irresistibly to the enticing partisan spectacle.

By the end of the nineteenth century, however, popular politics began to wither. High-minded reformers rejected both parties and the robotic uproar they sustained. In the new century voter turnout plunged and partisan engagement became a shadow of its old self. Young Americans, clustered together in schools, began to define “a parallel youth culture” and a “shared generational identity” that regarded partisan extravagance as outdated and irrelevant (137, 141). Adolescents (a term not often used before 1900) shed their partisan identities and developed other “rites of passage” (156).

One may sift through Grinspan’s sprightly book for clues about the present. In many ways, today’s young Sanders supporters appear distant from the virgin voters of an earlier era. Far more formally educated and more oriented toward each other, today’s enthusiasts have enlisted for a candidate, not for a party. This new allegiance may be transitory. And yet many of them may be enjoying a bonding experience that proved so alluring to young Americans 150 years ago. They and their new friends once again may find meaning and group solidarity as they try to make an impact on the adult world.

Positioned at the intersection of cultural and political history, The Virgin Vote is cogent, concise, and eminently readable. Grinspan uses relevant secondary sources, notably books by Michael McGerr and Richard Bensel, and he displays a keen eye for fresh primary sources, including some collected at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where he works. He navigates expertly between historians who applaud the vibrant democracy of the nineteenth century and others who consider it meaninglessly superficial and unable to address serious policy matters.

Time and again, the reader will spot parallels that seem to connect past and present. The Republican Party rose rapidly from “nonexistence to dominance” between 1854 and 1860. Its champions were eager to upend the existing structure of political power. They viewed the inexperience of their first presidential candidate, John C. Frémont, as “his most valuable asset.” When Frémont faltered, Republicans turned it all up a notch. In 1860 they enlisted young “Wide Awakes” to wear “shiny black capes” and march in unison to a “stirring drumbeat” in dramatic “torchlit demonstrations”—and all on behalf of another seemingly inexperienced candidate (115-19). So take comfort. If banal partisan jousting back then somehow produced a Lincoln, perhaps the American political system will once again benefit from undeserved luck.

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