Distinct Culture.

At the end of the Revolutionary War the United States became an independent political state, but the diverse population was hardly unified. The inhabitants were of different races and ethnicities and had no official religion or common culture. By the end of the War of 1812 the United States had begun to live up to its name. Americans were starting to develop a cultural identity that drew upon their varied heritages and assimilated them into a national character.

Statistics.

The federal census of 1790 recorded the population as 3,929,214 and the land area of the country as 867,980 square miles. Men and women of British descent were the single largest group of Americans, representing 50 percent of the entire population in the original states; the rest included Africans, Germans, Dutch, French, and Native Americans. The United States at this time was predominantly rural, with only one in twenty Americans living in...