To Be 'Read by the Whole People': Press, Party, and Public Sphere in the United States, 1789-1840.

Was the press in the early and antebellum republic adequate to the task of imparting sufficient political information to the American people? Identifying broad patterns, the essay proposes a 'general crisis' in political communications in the 1830s. The configuration of party, press, public sphere, and popular audience changed in very different ways and at such different rates in the various regions making up the antebellum United States that one has to ask whether the nation was comprised of fundamentally different political systems.