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were glimpses of dozens of homes, visits to the
New England poets, and interviews with senators in
Washington. Farmers, slave-holders, Abolitionists,
prison officials, and preachers passed in review; pale
brides alternated with chivalrous men; the funeral
cortege of John C. Calhoun moved gravely along between
mourning Southerners, and in the White House park
strode a general, now president of the United States.
A thrilling, crucial period of America was
mirrored in these letters. It was a period of
post-bellum adjustment, transition, and expansion,
during which American progress and versatility were
definitely established, and yet one whose boundless
possibilities were surcharged with apprehensions for
the future. During the forties the telegraph had been
invented; the reaper had revolutionized agriculture in
the Middle West; the sewing-machine had lightened the
burden of the housewife. Largely through the pioneer
work of Scandinavian settlers, Wisconsin had been
admitted to the Union the same year that gold was
discovered in California; and manufactures flourished
in the East. Immigrants flocked to both East and
West in such numbers that native Americans worried
about preserving the cherished American ideals; in
1849 carpenters were paid sixteen dollars a day on
the West coast, and common laborers,
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