This is the first in Thomas Cole's "Course of the Empire" series.  As you view each of the paintings, notice how the sun rises and moves through the sky.  The mountain in the background remains throughout, but in the foreground, considerable changes take place.  Cole chose something from Byron to help describe this work: 

There is the moral of all human tales;
'This but the same reheasal of the past

First Freedom, and then Glory: when that fails
Wealth, vice, corruption