By 1840 The United States had grown from a fledgling republic into a strong, expanding democratic nation. American democracy was severely limited, however, to adult white men. Several states had adopted public education as a mandate, a women's movement was beginning, temperance lecturers railed against the evils of strong drink, prison and insane asylum reforms were in the making, a new religious revival was “burning out” much of middle America; in short, the founding fathers might well have been astounded by what they had wrought. The number of states had doubled to 26 from the original 13 and more would soon be added. The U.S. population stood at 17 million, up from 3 million during the revolution.

The Texas revolution and the Mexican-American War had added a million square miles of new territory to the United States, and the Oregon Boundary settlement with Great Britain establihsed the northern boundary with Canada. The nation was moving westward; the broad prairies, Mineral-rich mountains and Pacific coast beckoned. But first, something had to be settled: the North and South did not see the world through the same eyes.

One thing the founding fathers would have recognized with considerable discomfort was that the slavery issue was still present, and not only present, but becoming ever more heated. Gag orders muzzled Congress, personal liberty laws challenged federal authority over fugitive slaves, abolitionists thundered, and Southern plantation owners had begun calling slavery a “positive good,” a notion probably unthinkable before 1800. By 1850 talk of secession and war was common both inside and outside Congress, and in every election from 1844 through 1860, the “peculiar institution” of slavery was an issue. It was only a matter of time before something would happen, the “national calamity” that George Mason had mentioned at the Constitutional Convention when debating about slavery.

The ante-bellum era was also a time of significant reform in the U.S. Movements for women's rights, prison and asylum reform, the Second Great Awakening and the rise of new religions—such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Mormon Church—also characterized the period. It was also the height of the Romantic period in American literature, as the nation found its own new voices in Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman and others.

Summaries

Overview
The 1840's
The 1850's
Seneca Falls
1850 Compromise
Texas
The Mexican War
Plantation Life
Civil War