Eighteen forty eight was the year of revolutions in Europe. In the United Statesit seemed like business as usual, at least insofar as the stability of thenation was concerned. There was no revolution expected here. And none came.Nevertheless within little more than a dozen years, there would indeed be arevolution, a cataclysm which would set in train some devastating social,political and economic changes and, at the same time, claim the lives of farmore men and women than had been casualties in Europe in its year ofrevolutions. Few Americans glimpsed this possibility in 1848.

Many instead, and understandably, congratulated themselves on not merely thestability but also the overall success of their nation. Contrary to theexpectations of some European observers at the time and subsequently, the“experiment” that had been the American Republic in 1776 had beena triumphant success. This success had been political, economic andmilitary.

Its political manifestation was obvious. The United States, as of March 1848following the recent war and peace treaty with Mexico, comprised a huge nationcovering not 890,000 square miles, as in 1776, but instead almost three million.There were now not thirteen but, by mid-1848, thirty states. Equally importantthe nation’s political institutions had advanced at what seemed an equallybreathtaking pace. The Federal Constitution, drawn up and put into operation inthe late 1780s, had survived not only unscathed but as an object of venerationto all but a small minority of Americans, or at least of white Americans.Presidents had come and gone, Congresses had been elected and then turned out asthe Constitution stipulated, and a federal judiciary had operated sometimescontroversially but never so as to bring large numbers of Americans to questionthe viability of their Republic. It was all much as the more optimistic of thenation’s founding fathers might have hoped.