1. Kit Carson Icon of the Frontier:
The development of the United States from the Era of Good Feelings to the end of the Mexican-American War

2. Rapprochement and Sectionalism
The treaty flood:
Rush-Bagot, Continental, and Adams-Onis treaties.
The Americas and the Monroe Doctrine.
Sectionalism and the new politics.
Sectional issues and the attempts at compromise.
Missouri and the slavery question: the Missouri Compromise.
The new face of slavery and southern retrenchment.
The election of 1824, sectionalism triumphant in the election of John Quincy Adams.

3. Growth and Industry Industrial development in the new nation.
The “Waltham system” and factory development.
Eli Whitney’s “American system”.
The Second Bank of the United States.
Transportation and the sinews of the economy.
Road building and the first “internal improvements”.
Steam and the revolution in water transport: rivers and canals.
The Marshall Supreme Court and the move to interpret the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution.
Dartmouth College v. Woodward, Gibbons v. Ogdon, and Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge

4. Jacksonian Democracy Andrew Jackson as President. Democrats vs. Whigs
Election of 1828 and national vs. sectional politics.
The fight over the Second Bank of the Unites States.
Native American removals and Jackson’s nationalism.
Nullification Crisis: sectionalism in the new context.
Democrats vs. Whigs
The Second Party system and the rise of the Whigs.
Martin Van Buren and the Panic of 1837.
The Log Cabin campaign: dirty politics and image.
Middle class society: a new social order.
The new middle class and their origins.
Reform movements: effects of the Second Great Awakening.

5. Kit Carson Carson’s life and the westward impulse.
Frontier families and the push west.
Carson’s life as a fur trapper and mountain man.
“Scout” Carson, Mexican territory, and relations with Native Americans.
Manifest Destiny and the results of an expanding America.
The overland trails and the settlement of the far west.
John O’Sullivan and the concept of Manifest Destiny as the new American ideal: Carson as frontier hero.

6. The Mexican-American War and After: Compromise of 1850
Texas and the election of 1844.
Tyler’s problems and Texas annexation.
Polk and expansionism.
“54’40” or fight!”
Deceiving Congress and Polk’s push for war.
The Mexican-American War.
The Compromise of 1850.
The post-war situation: California, slavery, and gold.
The Compromise and it’s effects.