The Civil War Congress

The author has elsewhere dealt in detail with the Constitution of the so-called Confederate States of America, which exhibited both considerable similarities to and significant departures from the US model on which it was largely based. His present focus is on constitutional issues that arose in the North during the same period. His principal emphasis is on legislative controversies. After the Civil War Congress the Constitution was never the same again. Not only did Congress adopt a medley of novel war measures that challenged preexisting notions of federal authority, but the domestic legislation of the period also reflected a sea change in constitutional interpretation amounting to no less than wholesale abandonment of states'-rights principles that had generally prevailed before the war. Some aspects of this revolution were accomplished without explicit recognition that change was taking place. Congressional authority was often assumed rather than explained. And of course it was in Congress that the great debate over reconstruction largely took shape.