The Paradox of Power: Statebuilding in America, 1754–1920 by Ballard C. Campbell (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Paradox of Power: Statebuilding in America, 1754–1920 by Ballard C. Campbell William D. Adler (bio) Keywords State-building, Early national state, Role of Government The Paradox of Power: Statebuilding in America, 1754–1920. By Ballard C. Campbell. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2021. Pp. 392. Paper, $34.95.) Scholars of the early U.S. have long been interested in how state-building occurred, but a massive revival of attention to the subject in the past twenty years has produced a wave of important research. The Paradox of Power enters this conversation with an impressive contribution to our understanding of the early national state through a synthetic analysis of how [End Page 340] government grew, not only nationally but at the local and state levels as well. Ballard Campbell argues in this book that American state-building has been characterized by a paradox between theory and action: a strong commitment to anti-statist values on the one hand, with a practical necessity for enhanced state action on the other. Those immediate needs, such as physical infrastructure, security, education, and others, led over time to increased state capacity as an administrative apparatus was built to handle these various functions, he argues. The anti-statist values continued apace in our culture but ultimately could not arrest the growth of government. Campbell traces these shifts from the colonial period all the way through the early twentieth century, covering well-trodden soil on how government expanded at the local, state, and national levels. The book contains a wealth of information on what government did and how it did it, including an original collection of state-level actions (contained in the Appendix) that will be of much use to scholars. The greatest contribution of this work will be for those looking for a general treatment of the subject material, as it covers a wide range of time and a similarly wide range of governmental activities. Students in advanced undergraduate courses or graduate students who need an overview of state-building throughout early American history will benefit from reading this work. As for its contributions to the scholarly literature, since it is a work of synthesis, scholars will most benefit from the above mentioned dataset on state actions as well as wrestling with its argument about the "paradox" of American state-building, although even this is familiar to students of these questions. For example, in his work Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present (Princeton, NJ, 2015), Gary Gerstle makes a similar contention about the tension in the Constitution between personal liberties and limited government on the one hand, versus the notion of "the public good" that was more prevalent at the state level. In the field of American political development, political scientists have long debated these questions as well; most recently, in Stephen Skrowronek's Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive (Oxford, UK, 2021), the authors home in on the noteworthy friction between the "unity" in executive strength within the constitutional framework as compared to the large administrative apparatus that undermines that theoretical unity. No doubt, Campbell's thesis must be situated alongside these others and is one scholars must contend with. [End Page 341] Campbell has produced an important work that should be read by scholars of the early republic who are interested in continuing to explore these fundamental debates. In particular, Chapters 3–6 will be worthwhile for readers of this journal as Campbell moves from the founding of the republic through to the cusp of the Civil War. We will likely continue debating the nature of state-building in early America for many years to come. William D. Adler William D. Adler is associate professor of political science at Northeastern Illinois University. He is the author of Engineering Expansion: The U.S. Army and Economic Development, 1787–1860 (Philadelphia, 2021) as well as articles on the early United States, the American presidency, and American political development. Copyright © 2023 Society for Historians of the Early American Republic