The limits of sovereignty : property confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War / Daniel W. Hamilton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hamilton, Daniel W.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Enemy property--United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865.

Enemy property.

United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Law and legislation.

United States.

United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Confiscations and contributions.

United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Claims.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (240 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Americans take for granted that government does not have the right to permanently seize private property without just compensation. Yet for much of American history, such a view constituted the weaker side of an ongoing argument about government sovereignty and individual rights. What brought about this drastic shift in legal and political thought? Daniel W. Hamilton locates that change in the crucible of the Civil War. In the early days of the war, Congress passed the First and Second Confiscation Acts, authorizing the Union to seize private property in the rebellious states of the Confederacy, and the Confederate Congress responded with the broader Sequestration Act. The competing acts fueled a fierce, sustained debate among legislators and lawyers about the principles underlying alternative ideas of private property and state power, a debate which by 1870 was increasingly dominated by today's view of more limited government power. Through its exploration of this little-studied consequence of the debates over confiscation during the Civil War, The Limits of Sovereignty will be essential to an understanding of the place of private property in American law and legal history.

Contents:

Legislative property confiscation before the Civil War

Radical property confiscation in the Thirty-seventh Congress

The conservative assault on confiscation

The moderate coup

The Confederate Sequestration Act

The ordeal of sequestration

Civil War confiscation in the reconstruction supreme court

The limits of sovereignty.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [173]-215) and index.

ISBN:

9786611957063

9781281957061

1281957062

9780226314860

0226314863

OCLC:

476229575