Congress approves funds for a National Road (1806)

First American textile factory opens in Waltham, Massachusetts (1814)

Congress outlaws Atlantic slave trade (1776–1809)

Andrew Jackson forces Creeks to relinquish millions of acres during War of 1812

Struggle to expand the suffrage begins with Maryland reformers

Martin Van Buren creates first statewide political machine (1817–1821)

Missouri crisis (1819–1821) over slavery

In rural areas, people of different ranks share a common culture

Upper-class women sponsor charitable organizations

American Colonization Society (1817)

Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (1818) spreads notion of the self-made man

New England shoe industry expands

Erie Canal completed (1825)

Henry Clay’s “American System” of government-assisted development

Market economy expands nationwide

Slave trade moves African Americans west

Rural women take factory work, alter gender roles

Rise of Andrew Jackson and Democratic Party

Anti-Masonic Party and Working Men’s Party rise and decline

Benevolent reform movements

Emerson champions transcendentalism

Charles Finney and others advance revivalist religion

Industrialism fragments society into more distinct classes and cultures

David Walker’s Appeal … to the Colored Citizens (1829) attacks slavery

Rise of southern sectionalism

U.S. textiles compete with British goods

Canal systems expand trade in eastern U.S.

Financial panic of 1837 begins six-year depression

Boom in cotton output

Increase in waged work sparks conflict between labor and capital

Indian Removal Act (1830) forces native peoples west

Cherokees’ “Trail of Tears” (1838)

Tariff battles (1828, 1832) and nullification

Whig Party forms (1834)

Jackson destroys Second Bank, expands executive power

Temperance crusade expands

Joseph Smith and Mormonism

Middle-class culture spreads

Slavery defended as a “positive good”

Urban popular culture (sex trade and minstrelsy)

W. L. Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society (1833)

Female Moral Reform Society (1834) defines gender identity

Texas gains independence (1836)

American machine tool industry expands

Walker Tariff moves U.S. toward “free trade” system and principles of “classical liberalism”

Working-class districts emerge in cities

German and Irish immigrants spark nativist movement

Mormons resettle in Utah

Log cabin campaign (1840)

Second Party System flourishes

Lawyers emerge as political leaders

Fourierist and other communal settlements

Seneca Falls Convention (1848) calls for women’s rights

Antislavery Liberty Party (1840)

New African American culture develops in Mississippi Valley

Severe recession cuts industrial jobs (1858)

Railroads connect Midwest and eastern ports

Cotton production and prices rise, as does the cost of enslaved laborers

Immigrants replace native-born women in textile mills

White farm families settle trans-Mississippi west

Reform becomes political: states enact Maine-style temperance laws (1851 on)

“Mormon War” over polygamy (1858)

American Renaissance: Melville, Whitman, and Hawthorne

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

Black and white preachers promote Christianity among slaves

Free blacks in North become politically active