The election of 1828
President Andrew Jackson
The Webster-Hayne debate
Black Hawk's War
Nullification
Jackson and the bank
The Indian removal
Jackson at bay
Jackson vindicated
Tocqueville's America
The panic of 1837
Texas becomes a bone of contention
The Mexican war
Visitors
Hell in harness
The near West
A modest competence
The fur West
Jedediah Smith
A trapper's life
The Southwest
John Charles Fremont
The taking of California
The gold rush
The Northwest
Religion
Converting the heathen
The Mormons
"This huge misery": slave life in the South
The church of abolition
Free Blacks
Utopian communities
Reform
The women Immigration
Urban life
Entertainment
High society
"The devil is in the people"
Technology
The economy
Education
The kindly killers
Home life
Work and nature
American character
American art
American originals
American literature: the precursors
People's poetry
Breaking out
The darker side
The historians
The United States and the world
The new politics
The Republicans
Bleeding Kansas
Lincoln reenters politics
A decision deferred
The Lincoln-Douglas debates
Way out West
John Brown
The election of 1860
War.