Mark Twain famously observed that “history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes,” perhaps pushing back against George Santayana’s warning that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. This course examines the often-misunderstood U.S. era of 1815 –1880, testing the related assumptions that history repeats itself and that hindsight is clear. Like today, the period began with a contentious war that unleashed rapid economic and technological change, producing shocks that reshaped nearly every aspect of American life. The course rests on two core ideas: first, that our focus on Civil War and Reconstruction has obscured how Americans adapted to these earlier transformations; and second, that those adaptations may offer perspective—and even reassurance—as we confront similar “rhymes” in our own time.