The presidential election of 1844 was one of the two or three most momentous elections in American history. Had Henry Clay won instead of James K. Polk, we'd be living in a very different country today. It cemented the westward expansion that brought Texas, California, and Oregon into the union. It also took place amid religious turmoil that included anti-Mormon and anti-Catholic violence, and the "Great Disappointment" in which thousands of followers of an obscure preacher named William Miller believed Christ would return to earth in October 1844. Author and journalist John Bicknell details even more compelling, interwoven events that occurred during this momentous year-the murder of Joseph Smith, the religious fermentation of the Second Great Awakening, John C. Frémont's exploration of the West, Charles Goodyear's patenting of vulcanized rubber, the near-death of President John Tyler in a freak naval explosion, and much more. All of these elements illustrate the competing visions of the American future-Democrats v. Whigs, Mormons v. Millerites, nativists v. Catholics, those who risked the venture westward and those who stayed safely behind-and how Polk's victory cemented the vision of a continental nation. John Bicknell has written and edited for FCW, Congressional Quarterly, Roll Call, and was coeditor of the 2012 edition of Politics in America, CQ's 1200-page guide to the US Congress. He lives in Haymarket, Virginia.

This volume includes all of the surviving songs by German-American composer, performer, critic, and businessman Herrman S. Saroni (1823/24–1900), who is now most remembered as the owner and editor of Saroni’s Musical Times (one of America’s first significant music magazines). The entire date range of these songs is 1844–89, but the vast majority appeared in the 1840s and early 1850s. Saroni was among the first composers in America to combine aspects of German lieder and various features associated with popular song, and these works fuse accessibility to amateurs with sophisticated compositional techniques. Despite several indicators of success in his era, Saroni’s songs are almost completely unknown today. These works deserve reconsideration and modern performance both for their historical significance and for their aesthetic value. Most of the songs in this edition were published in Saroni’s lifetime, but an appendix includes a transcription of an unpublished holograph manuscript song, the original of which is also shown in two plate images.

The Sager orphans (sometimes referred to as Sager children) were the children of Naomi and Henry Sager. In April 1844 Henry Sager and his family took part in the great westward migration and started their journey along the Oregon Trail. During their journey both Naomi and Henry Sager lost their lives and left their seven children orphaned. Later adopted by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, missionaries in what is now Washington, the children were orphaned a second time, when both their new parents were killed during the Whitman massacre in November 1847. Catherine (1835-1910), the eldest of the Sager girls, married Clark Pringle, a Methodist minister and bore him 8 children. They lived in Spokane, Washington. About 1860, ten years after her arrival in Oregon, she wrote a first-hand account of their journey across the plains and their life with the Whitmans. This account today is regarded as one of the most authentic accounts of the American westward migration. She hoped to earn enough money to set up an orphanage in the memory of Narcissa Whitman. She never found a publisher. Catherine died on August 10, 1910, at the age of seventy-five.