Mark Power Smith is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the Hamilton School. He is a political and intellectual historian, with a focus on the Civil War era. His first monograph – Young America: The Transformation of Nationalism before the Civil War (University of Virginia, 2022) – examines how a coalition within the Democratic Party, known as “Young America,” reshaped ideas about American nationalism during the middle of the nineteenth century. He has also published articles in the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of the Early Republic, and American Nineteenth Century History on household government during the sectional crisis, a diplomatic incident in 1853 known as the Koszta Affair, and spiritualism as an element of popular culture in New York during the 1860s. Power Smith has previously been a postdoctoral fellow at Arizona State University, and then a Junior Research Fellow and lecturer at the University of Oxford.
Power Smith is currently working on two book projects. One examines how Americans from across the Union strategized to retake control of the federal government and end Reconstruction during the revolutionary crisis in the Atlantic world of the 1860s and 70s. The other explores the impact of generational identities on political issues such as constitutional revision, property rights and abolition.
“The Crisis of Household Government and the Rise of Democratic Conservatism before the Civil War,” Journal of the Civil War Era 15 (September 2025).
“The Young America Movement, the Koszta Affair of 1853, and the Construction of Nationalism before the Civil War,” Journal of the Early Republic 41 (Spring 2021)
“Séances in the City: The ‘Operational Aesthetic’ and ‘Modern Spiritualism’ in the Popular Culture of New York City, 1865 – 1870,” American Nineteenth Century History 17 (January 2017).
