Many people grew their own food, and many wives made the clothes for their own family. Their lives revolved around the weather and the hours of daylight. Most people lived on isolated farmsteads. The America of 1815 was what we would call a third-world country. The years 1815-48 witnessed dramatic changes in the United States.

Now, instant long-distance communication would become possible for the first time.

Neither Alexander the Great nor Benjamin Franklin two thousand years later had known anything faster than a galloping horse. For thousands of years, messages had been limited by the speed with which messengers could travel and the distance that eyes could see signals like flags or smoke. As those who witnessed it understood, this demonstration would change the world. He used a code that he had recently devised and spelled out “What Hath God Wrought.” Thirty miles away in Baltimore, Morse’s associate, Alfred Vail, received the electric signals and telegraphed the message back. Supreme Court in Washington, tapped out a message on a device of cogs and coiled wires. Morse, sitting in the chambers of the U.S. One of the many aspects of history that I treat in the book is innovation in communications and its consequences. Both kinds of history are essential for a full understanding of the past. I also wanted to combine the traditional kind of history-political, military, diplomatic-with the newer kinds of history: social, cultural, and economic. I also knew that I wanted to address not just fellow academic specialists and our captive audiences in the courses we teach but also the general curious public. When I signed on to do my volume in the Oxford History of the United States, several volumes had already appeared, so I knew what was expected.

What god hath wrought howe