In this episode, John discusses the social, political and economic evolution of the United States from the late 1700s to the end of the War of 1812. John talks about the evolution of the U.S. from a limited democracy with a decidedly agricultural bent toward a bustling trade hub and nascent manufacturing sector with a huge middle class that starts to flex its political muscle. This episode serves as an explanatory bridge between how the high-minded and elite-controlled economic and political institutions of the late 18th century gave way to a much more democratized and practical ethos that would drive how the United States developed in the early to mid 19th century.

John explains the expansion of infrastructure, education, trade and industry in the early 1800s and how almost all of it was driven by commerce in a way that many of the founders would have found trivial or even distasteful. He breaks down how a new generation of leaders, like John Calhoun, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, worked to knit the country together and forge a new identity for the young republic as a rising economic powerhouse. John contrasts the new society emerging in the U.S., contrasts it with what existed in Europe and explains just how revolutionary what Americans were building was--decades after the revolutionary war had ended.