Samuel Finley Breese Morse is credited as co-inventor of Morse Code: a way of sending text as a series of on-off tones, clicks, or lights that can be deciphered by a trained listener.

The Age of Reason was written by Thomas Paine and published at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Paine was an American revolutionary who lived in France throughout the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon. In The Age of Reason Paine attacks organized religion and paints the Catholic Church as corrupt and morally bankrupt. It is a classic example of Enlightenment and deist literature. It was also a bestseller in the United States and led to a massive revival of Deism amongst the American middle and upper classes. 

A person who wanted to abolish slavery in the United States (and elsewhere) was known as an abolitionist.

Held captive during the attack on Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key wrote his poem "Defence of Fort McHenry" from which the lyrics for the Star-Spangled Banner were taken.

The term used to describe the historical period between the American Revolution and the Civil War is the Antebellum Era. The term "antebellum" directly means before the war. In the context of the United States it is generally used to refer to the Southern United States prior to the Civil War. 

In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison began publishing his weekly newspaper, The Liberator, which advocated the abolition of slavery. Garrison, a white man from Massachusetts, was one of the abolition movement's most prominent figures.

The invention of the telephone was an ongoing and convoluted process throughout the mid-nineteenth century; however, popular history and patent law credits Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson with the invention of the telephone, in 1875. 

Noah Webster was an early American lexicographer and educational reformer. Webster wrote extensive textbooks teaching generations of young Americans how to read, write, and spell. He is credited with helping secularize and nationalize the American education process. 

The antebellum period saw a wide range of social reform movements develop. Most of these had their roots in the burgeoning evangelical Christianity of the time period. Abolitionism, women's rights and suffrage, public education, and temperance all saw reform societies founded on their behalf. The labor movement did not begin in force until the late nineteenth century and more widespread factory work in America.

Alexis de Tocqueville was minor French noble who undertook a tour of America in 1831, officially to study the American prison system, but instead analyzed all of American society. In 1835, he published his analysis of American society in his book Democracy in America. De Tocqueville's book is still widely read and considered one of the chief sources on society in Jacksonian America. In particular, de Tocqueville makes many claims about why America can produce a vibrant democracy.