Discusses the period of growth in American history prior to the Civil War, describing the lives of people from a variety of backgrounds, including Jedediah Smith, Emily Dickinson, John James Audubon, and Sojourner Truth. Also the Santa Fe Trail, pioneers, Mormons, railroad workers, Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention (1848), Dred Scott, Henry Thoreau, Daniel Webster, the Underground Railroad, and the Lowell Mills.