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

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Paradox of Power: Statebuilding in America, 1754–1920 by Ballard C. Campbell Peter J. Kastor The Paradox of Power: Statebuilding in America, 1754–1920. By Ballard C. Campbell. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2021. Pp. x, 365. Paper, $34.95, ISBN 978-0-7006-3256-5; cloth, $80.00, ISBN 978-0-7006-3225-8.) In The Paradox of Power: Statebuilding in America, 1754–1920, Ballard C. Campbell attempts nothing less than a grand narrative of how Americans governed themselves in the era before 1920. That is no simple feat. Add to this the fact that he discusses not only the federal government but also state governments, all the while navigating tumultuous changes in governance and politics, and the degree of difficulty (to borrow that familiar phrase from Olympic scoring) increases considerably. Campbell accomplishes his goals with clarity, elegance, and authority. Where this book struggles is equally informative, revealing some of the fundamental challenges in telling the story of statebuilding. Two particular concerns (or two paradoxes, as the title suggests) animate this story. The first is a governmental structure that must wield power in order to achieve its goals despite a political culture with deep anxieties about centralized power. The second is federalism itself, a system created by the Constitution that afforded new powers to the national government while nonetheless preserving important policy-making roles to the states. Tracing the long arc of this narrative of two paradoxes, Campbell has constructed a book divided into two parts, but he really describes three eras of statebuilding. Part 1 discusses the British colonial roots of governance, the crucible of the American Revolution, and the struggle to build effective governance structures under the Constitution. Part 2 shows how that system was transformed by the Civil War, a conflict that refashioned the relationship [End Page 338] between state and federal powers while also granting the federal government new and expansive capacities. This section concludes with a description of the birth of the “modern” state as Progressive reform, bureaucratic theory, and the demands of modernization extended what the Civil War had begun. “Modern” belongs in quotations here because the term is indicative of the difficulties facing Campbell. He is quick to push back against scholars of the twentieth century who have claimed that there was no true “state” in the United States until the emergence of bureaucratic management and social welfare systems. In doing so, he makes a powerful case for seeing early statebuilding on its own terms. If Campbell resists the impulse to normalize the state, he does normalize its locations and its purposes. Most of his examples of the organization and services of states and localities come from the cities and states of the Northeast. Not surprisingly, New York and Boston loom large. In the end, this book generally treats the state as an engine of progress. Enslavement appears most significantly in the context of the federal government’s effort to end the institution during the Civil War, and its struggle with the authority of states during Reconstruction. And yet states and the federal government had a much longer tradition of working together to secure racial supremacy. Campbell acknowledges this history in passing references to Native Americans, but he does not explore the ways that state capacity (whether the invention of uniformed police forces in southern cities, the elaborate civil-military administration of federal territories, or the complex state-level requirements of Jim Crow) expanded to pursue specific racial objectives. Writing in prose that is sophisticated but remains accessible, Campbell eschews the risk of deploying either the jargon or the narrow debates that too often encumber the discussion of statebuilding. The result is a book that situates statebuilding front and center in the American experience, with a clarity of argument that is both thought-provoking and compelling. Peter J. Kastor Washington University in St. Louis Copyright © 2023 Southern Historical Association