The new republic struggled to define and extend democratic ideals in the face of rapid economic, territorial, and demographic changes.

• Key Concept: The United States began to develop a modern democracy and celebrated a new national culture, while Americans sought to define the nation’s democratic ideals and change their society and institutions to match them.

• Key Concept: Innovations in technology, agriculture, and commerce powerfully accelerated the American economy, precipitating profound changes to U.S. society and to national and regional identities.

• Key Concept: The U.S. interest in increasing foreign trade and expanding its national borders shaped the nation’s foreign policy and spurred government and private initiatives.

• In what ways did political democracy change in the years following the War of 1812?

• Did the Jacksonian Era make American politics more democratic or autocratic?

• How did transportation networks and growing markets increase the interdependency of the nation's industrial and agricultural economies?

• What factors influenced the American westward movement?

• In what ways did Manifest Destiny both unite and divide the American people?

• What issues divided America in the first half of the nineteenth century?

• How did religious and reform movements redefine American concepts of freedom, equality and morality?

• Why had sectional compromise become impossible by 1860?

• What were the causes of the Civil War?