The social forces that reshaped the United States in its first half century were profound. Western expansion, growing racial conflict, unprecedented economic changes linked to the early Industrial Revolution, and the development of a stronger American Protestantism in the Second Great Awakening all overlapped with one another in ways that were both complementary and contradictory. Furthermore, these changes all had a direct impact on American political culture that attempted to make sense of how these varied impulses had transformed the country. The changing character of American politics can be divided into two time periods separated by the War of 1812. In the early republic that preceded the war, "REPUBLICANISM" had been the guiding political value. Although an unquestioned assault on the aristocratic ideal of the colonial era, republicanism also included a deep fear of the threat to public order posed by the decline of traditional values of hierarchy and inequality
