Introduction: Federalism in the Civil War Era

Federalism-or the distribution of power among different governing bodies-defined how most nineteenthcentury Americans understood their relationship to the government, both in theory and in practice.1 These men and women did not simply interact with the government and the law; rather, they were forced to navigate the complex relationships and overlapping authorities among the various governing bodies and regulations that made up the federal system. [...]recently, Civil War-era political and legal historians primarily viewed federalism as a binary-as the relationship between the federal government and the states. Since the late years of the Civil War, Confederates and their defenders attempted to shift the meaning of the war from a conflict over slavery to one over the equality and sovereignty of the states. [...]the articles in this issue examine federalism from multiple angles and investigate how the structures of the federal system had significant consequences for how Americans engaged with the most pressing problems of the period. [...]many Americans' fears of "consolidation" by the national government corresponded well with incorporating new territories into the polity; states' rights advocates considered a diverse collection of homogenous entities a strength.