Author Type

Faculty

College

Arts and Letters

Department

History

Document Type

Article

Publication/Event/Conference Title

Federal History Journal

Publication Status

Version of Record

Abstract

Scholars continue to examine how and why the states that remained loyal to the Union won the American Civil War, confirming its centrality to the subsequent trajectory of American federalism. The evolution of our democratic republic's political culture continues to fascinate Americans because it reveals the ongoing development of both the shared legal and constitutional authority between the states and the federal government and of self-governance. Certainly, the war was a "turning point in the history of American federalism," as Michael Les Benedict asserted 30 years ago, largely because it redefined the relationship between government and its citizenry in more definitive, national terms.' If government was designed to be truly effective when it was hidden from plain sight, the war unmasked the multifaceted interplay between the national and the local. The Union victory reinforced an understanding that the national government was not merely an agent for the states. Rather, it became the dominant political entity, while at the same time it recognized the divided nature of sovereignty, the diffusion of power, and the shared governance of citizenship that bound Americans in a new national identity.

First Page

83

Last Page

108

Publication Date

2019

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