Modernization, southern separatism, and state formation in American political development

Abstract

The American state both survived and was transformed by the Civil War. The national state survived in the sense that its territorial integrity and political institutions remained intact. In the middle of the nineteenth century, these minimal conditions of state existence were threatened by southern separatism and could only be met through a successfully prosecuted civil war. If the war's outcome had been different, alternative historical trajectories would have replaced the United States with at least two nations, ultimately perhaps more, and in the process profoundly disrupted the established traditions and institutions of the American state inherited by the northern remainder of the nation. Union victory in the Civil War minimized these disruptions but, even so, the impact of the conflict destroyed political traditions and continuity in at least one-third of the reconstituted nation. A new American state emerged from the Civil War in the sense that the conflict settled long-standing questions of whether the national government was to possess the fundamental attributes of territorial and governmental sovereignty or was to serve only to coordinate the foreign relations of the constituent, federated states. Such questions only have contingent historical answers. In the American case, the answer depended on whether the northern Union possessed the will and strength to impose its formulation upon the South.