ABSTRACT
In one of the most famous paragraphs of our most famous autobiography, Henry Adams located the precise moment when “eighteenth-century troglodytic Boston” joined industrial America: “the opening of the Boston and Albany Rail-road; the appearance of the first Cunard Steamers in the bay; and the telegraphic messages which carried from Baltimore to Washington the news that Henry Clay and James K. Polk were nominated for the presidency. This was May, 1844” (Adams, 1931: 5).
