Professor Craig Steven Wilder of Dartmouth College explains why people like Walt Whitman were attracted to the Free Soil movement.

This iCue Mini-Documentary describes the religious conviction which drove John Brown to become an abolitionist. He believed slavery was a sin.

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Professor Maria Montoya of New York University explains the origins of "Manifest Destiny," which caught Americans' imaginations and propelled them westward.

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Just like today, self-help manuals were extremely popular in the early 19th century. Josh Brown of the American Social History Project examines one of these guides, The Skillful Housewife's Book.

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This iCue Mini-Documentary describes how domesticity became the expected role for middle-class women in the 19th century.

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This 1833 caricature of Andrew Jackson lampoons the seventh president as a despotic monarch. Professor Matthew Warshauer explains some of the details.

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This iCue Mini-Documentary describes Andrew Jackson's harsh attitudes against Native Americans, which led to the Indian Removal Act, forcing five eastern Indian tribes onto reservations in Oklahoma. Thousands of Indians died during the journey, which became known as "The Trail of Tears."

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This iCue Mini-Documentary uses two contemporary cartoons of the 1850s to illustrate the way in which many Southerners rationalized the institution of slavery as somehow being positive for blacks.

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