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. “A period chronicled in vivid and loving detail. . . . Plunges readers into a pulsating political culture long vanished.” — Wall Street Journal “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 “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 “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 “A useful historical look at how strong the youth demographic can be.” — Kirkus Reviews “This important book makes clear that we need a modern version of the Wide Awake movement.” — Vox “[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 “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 sprightly, well-researched book is a delight to read and notably thought-provoking. By recasting what has been called the golden age of American democracy in terms of youth or age rather than partisanship itself, The Virgin Vote tells a story about youth that is not just about a single cohort or a cultural moment, but captures a wide array of cultural and political phenomena from 1840 to 1900. It's Piaget meets political history, and it seems long overdue.--David Waldstreicher, City University of New York Now in paperback — When a man’s first vote was a vital milestone in life 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.