The interbellum Constitution : union, commerce, and slavery in the age of federalisms / Alison L. LaCroix.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

LaCroix, Alison L., Author.

Contributor:

Yale University Press, Publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--History--1815-1861.

United States.

United States--Politics and government--1815-1861.

Constitutional history--United States--19th century.

Constitutional history.

Genre:

Informational works.

Physical Description:

viii, 562 pages : black and white illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, [2024]

Summary:

"Between 1815 and 1861, American constitutional law and politics underwent a profound transformation. These decades of the Interbellum Constitution were a foundational period of both constitutional crisis and creativity. The Interbellum Constitution was a set of widely shared legal and political principles, combined with a thoroughgoing commitment to investing those principles with meaning through debate. Each of these shared principles--commerce, concurrent power, and jurisdictional multiplicity--concerned what we now call 'federalism,' meaning that they pertain to the relationships among multiple levels of government with varying degrees of autonomy. Alison L. LaCroix argues, however, that there existed many more federalisms in the early nineteenth century than today's constitutional debates admit. As LaCroix shows, this was a period of intense rethinking of the very basis of the U.S. national model--a problem debated everywhere, from newspapers and statehouses to local pubs and pulpits, ultimately leading both to civil war and to a new, more unified constitutional vision. This book is the first that synthesizes the legal, political, and social history of the early nineteenth century to show how deeply these constitutional questions dominated the discourse of the time." -- Publisher's description.

Contents:

Introduction: the age of federalisms

The constitutional lawyer in the long founding moment : a practice of federalism

The many directions of federal power : a federalism of commerce and migration

The steamboat and the commerce of the Union : a federalism of beneficent exchange

The justice, the sailors, and the founders' legacy : a federalism of the tripartite contract

The revolutionary daughter : a federalism of inheritance

The editor and the faithful ally : a federalism of native country and people

The Cherokee nation v. Georgia v. United States : a federalism of fractals

The customs of commerce : a federalism of jealous states

The fugitive slave laws, states' rights, and northern nullification : a federalism of federalisms

Epilogue.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 529-543) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: LaCroix, Alison L. Interbellum Constitution

ISBN:

9780300223217

0300223218

OCLC:

1416744724