a few themes regarding the antebellum era...

...in no particular order:

• tensions over the transition from a mercantile/ precapitalist/ agrarian economy to an industrial economy
• class (and by extension capitalism) is a key component in American democracy
• using the new social history to reconstruct the communities and recover the agency of enslaved people
• the development of whiteness
• racism as a projection of white nostalgia for a pre-industrial past + frustration with the new capitalist economy onto black people
• growing the nation and expanding westward via transportation, expansion of slavery, or cultural imaginary
• tensions between America as Edenic garden/ America as industrial giant; landscape, art, technology
• reform movements and religious plurality
• impacts of deskilling and proletarianization on the nation and on individuals