The study of the expanding nation from the Federal Period to the decade prior to the outbreak of the Civil War is vital. This was a period of dramatic territorial expansion and economic growth spurred on by the great optimism of Americans that anything was possible with hard work and imagination. The study of this era begins with the first years of the early republic. The Federal Period was crucial to the development of the United States as Americans forged a national identity and created institutions and practices to govern a nation. It was in this period that local and state loyalties were displaced by the seeds of nationalism. New political practices arose—the rise of the two-party system, contested presidential elections and judicial review. The institutions created by the Constitution took shape. The United States secured its place in the world by fending off both internal and external threats to nationhood. In their study of the Federal period students should explore the dynamic and explosive character of the time.
The beginning of the nineteenth century marked a major step in the economic transformation of the United States as regions underwent an economic expansion and modernization that changed the way Americans worked, where they lived and increased their productivity and their contact with the world beyond. Industrialization created new wealth, broader opportunities, and numerous social problems. It spurred the growth of cities and attracted a great wave of immigrants. Women and children were drawn into the labor system as small craft shop production gradually gave way to factory production. Students should explore how this market development was made possible by the spectacular “transportation revolution.”
Widespread material changes ushered in by the early industrialization were accompanied by significant developments in the American society, religion, popular culture, and intellectual life. The rise of theatre, the proliferation of academies of art and music, and the flowering of American literature all reflected the cultural changes of the time.
These years also witnessed a range of reform movements as diverse and enthusiastic as an in American history. Students should find excitement and relevance in exploring antebellum reform. These reformers themselves are fascinating and the issues they addressed have contemporary resonance. While time does not permit study of every reform movement, the crusades for temperance, public education, women’s rights, and the abolition of slavery are of special importance because they lead to fundamental changes and have relevance in the next century.
This era provides students with an exceptionally dramatic chapter in the evolution of political democracy in the United States. The republicanism of the founders was diluted by the democratic expansion of the white male participation in state and national politics and the rise of the second party system.
The story of the nation’s westward expansion is one of the central stories of the time. Students need to examine how the United States expanded its borders through international diplomacy and war and justified this expansion with the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Stories of the westward movement should impress upon students the importance of the individual in history and provide students with an opportunity to examine engaging primary sources. Another important development that students should explore is the expansion of agriculture and exploitation of natural resources; the emergence of slavery as a divisive political issue; and the evolution of the nation’s nineteenth century policy toward the American Indians.
Although the vitality and the democratic spirit of this age are noteworthy, it also important for students to understand that important sectional differences over slavery, protective tariffs, and states’ rights dominated the political debate of the day. Only a strong national spirit and the statesmanship of congressional giants such as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster forestalled the deepening sectional differences that would reach crisis proportions in the following decade.
