A young nation

In 1815 the United States was a large and young republic. Its political life was still heavily influenced by the founding fathers, one of whom James Madison was faced with the prospect of rebuilding the seat of government following the burning of the Executive Mansion, the Congress and the Library of Congress by British forces. A coat of white paint was put on the Executive Mansion which quickly and forever became known as the White House. 

While Madison may have been the father of the Constitution, he was a very mediocre President, who led his country into a war so senseless that the decisive battle was fought at New Orleans weeks after a peace treaty had been signed at Ghent. The slowness of communications in 1815 was thus a reality that contributed to political and military events, and cost thousands of lives. By 1848, America had domestic telegraphs and railroads, and transatlantic steam ships that cut weeks if not months off the crossing. 

The United States by 1848 occupied most of what is now called the lower 48, the last piece in southern Arizona and New Mexico being acquired in 1853 by treaty instead of conquest. America was a land divided and the politics of slavery and anti-slavery dominated a nation well on its way to becoming the 19th century version of a global superpower. 

This is a comprehensive account of thirty three of the most important years in American history. It covers the social. economic, religious, intellectual, literary, political and military events of that era. It recounts with foreboding gloom the political and economic miscalculations that would lead in less than two decades to both the near-destruction and rebirth of "a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."