Strivers in the 1830s coined a new phrase to describe their boom-time decisions: “to go ahead.” Going ahead was no joke; it produced calculable economic change. Economists estimate that the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) increased by as much as 38 percent between 1820 and 1829 and by approximately 36 percent more between 1830 and 1836. Although these statistics demonstrate remarkable growth between the Panic of 1819 and the Panic of 1837, they hide the real story of economic change: a nearly infinite number of individual choices.

Going ahead required difficult calculations. In “The Dollars,” a comic song of the time, thirty-six lines describing bad gambles caused enough chuckles to sustain two long encores. Performers lampooned wives who tried to buy status through expensive imports: “French clocks, French lamps, and French quelque chose / Each day her taste more costly grows / And that’s the way the money goes.” Dilettantes choosing to risk their fortunes against professional gamblers shared in the ridicule. The song assured, “All lottery tickets turn up blanks / And those who play at pharo banks / At poko, brag, or loo, or bluff / Must all be sure to lose enough.” The song’s humor depended on the hazy moral line between illegitimate gambles and legitimate investments such as city real estate, bank bonds, and stock shares. Buying slaves and farming the lands of dispossessed indigenous peoples could easily have been added to the song’s list of dubious dealings that contributed to the economic prosperity of the times. Slavery and Indian removal, however, provoked serious debate. Religious revivals, which preached that the nation’s future depended on the morality of individuals, burned through the United States. The same individualism that motivated Americans to reform what they saw as their sinful behavior encouraged them to go ahead, to make the financial choices that revolutionized their lives one market transaction at a time.