David S and Jeanne T Heidler American Historians

Americans of the Early Republic
In short, the Constitution and the government it created did not magically solve the new nation’s problems. The greater part of that task fell to ordinary Americans, a motley collection of diverse folk whom Europe rightly concluded were not much to look at. Most of the world’s ordinary people existed in drudgery, many under fierce oppression, and the bosses who superintended that oppression or dictated that drudgery, whether from ornate thrones or rude lairs, were complacent in their power. They watched with attitudes ranging from bemused skepticism to outright hostility as ordinary Americans undertook to build a republic so geographically immense and so idealistically principled that there had never been anything like it in the world. The countless names of these ordinary Americans would not make it into any history book nor would any of them ever regard their daily customs as particularly influential. But as individuals independently pursuing what turned out to be a collective dream, they were so different from anything before them they not only conquered their lands but also changed the world beyond them. With callused hands and sweat-soaked clothes, occasionally bloodied by a fight, they proved that courage, tenacity, and endurance could secure liberty and court fortune. There had never been anything like it, or them, in the world.
From Daily Life in the Early Republic, 1790-1820: Creating a New Nation (2004)

The Measure of Time in the Early Republic
Although their hours were not rapidly paced or measured by a universal standard, they were not empty. On the broad canvas of the national experience, great and profoundly important events moved with magisterial deliberateness. The new Constitution ushered in a new government, the merchant class struggled to cope with the financial burdens of new nationhood, farmers watched the skies and tilled the ground, pioneers pulled up stakes and trudged toward the western wilderness. All of this passed minute to minute, hour to hour, in the long span of years beginning with George Washington's inauguration and proceeding through the uncertainties, fears, and hopes of the country’s first three decades. The men and women living through these events did not see them as starkly marking the end of historically significant chapters or the start of important eras. They were merely part of the stuff of their lives, frequently pushed to the margins of more personal experiences, rarely occupying center stage for them as they do in our historical memory. As the sun rose and set on their seasons of birth, of youth, of planting, of reaping, of enfeeblement, and of death, they cried over their sorrows, laughed over their joys, despaired over their failures, took comfort in the affection of their families and the kindness of their friends. Later times would listen to the rhythmic tick of mechanical clocks, the precise click of quartz movements, or gaze upon shimmering, digitized numerals of increasingly sophisticated and accurate devices to mark the divisions of their days. Later times would have those mechanical or electronic tools to sustain the sensation that life is fleeting. For Americans in the early years of their country, there was something else. Their lives were not simpler because they were less ordered, sorted, and categorized. Their lives were differently arranged, not less varied, complex, or bewildering than our own. For those Americans, the inescapable verities were the same as they are today, reminding us that the human condition, both in earlier times and in ours, binds us all together. In a world without watches, the heart is a clock of sorts.
From Daily Life in the Early Republic, 1790-1820: Creating a New Nation (2004)