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4. Gerstle, Gary, Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present (Princeton, 2015),Google Scholar chap. 2. This point was also made by the older “commonwealth” school. See Scheiber, Harry, “Government and the Economy: Studies of the ‘Commonwealth’ Policy in Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3, no. 1 (1972): 135–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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7. I develop this argument in Neem, , Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass., 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Skocpol, , Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman, Okla., 2003), 48–57.Google Scholar

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10. Gerstle, Liberty and Coercion, 1–13.

11. My argument resonates with what William E. Nelson identified as a basic premise of colonial and early republic governance: the close connection between personal and official authority. See Nelson, , “Officeholding and Powerwielding: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Structure and Style in American Administrative History,” Law and Society Review 10, no. 2 (Winter 1976): 187–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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13. Gorski, Philip, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 2003),CrossRefGoogle Scholar xv–xvi, 2. Even though I refer to the mobilization of bodies, I am not engaging directly with Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality. Like Foucault, I recognize the reliance of the state on the activities of ordinary citizens. Yet Foucault’s understanding of power, and the state as its effect, is too diffuse. Governmentality is carried out in every body at all times within a particular regime. My article’s scope is more limited. I am interested in how state leaders turned to citizens to achieve particular public goods, and the implications of these early choices for state development. See Foucault, Michel, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, ed. Senellart, Michel, trans. Burchell, Graham (New York, 2008);Google Scholar Oksala, Johanna, “From Biopower to Governmentality,” in A Companion to Foucault, ed. Falzon, Christopher, O’Leary, Timothy, and Sawicki, Jana (Malden, Mass., 2013), chap. 15.Google Scholar

14. John, “American Political Development and Political History,” offers an overview and interpretation of recent scholarship.

15. A recent example is Beckert, Sven and Rockman, Seth, eds., Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (Philadelphia, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Clark, Christopher, Social Change in America: From the Revolution Through the Civil War (Chicago, 2006), chap. 4.Google Scholar

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18. Wallis, Joe and Dollery, Brian, “Social Capital and Local Government Capacity,” Australian Journal of Public Administration 61, no. 3 (September 2002): 76–85;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Putnam, Robert D. with Leonardi, Robert and Nanetti, Raffaella Y., Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993).Google Scholar

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22. Thus, in addition to civic labor, enslaved labor helped develop state capacity. See Quintana, Ryan A., “Slavery and the Conceptual History of the U.S. State,” Journal of the Early Republic 38, no. 1 (Spring 2018): 77–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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41. On this trend, see Neem, Democracy’s Schools, 161–72; Moss, Hilary J., Schooling Citizens: The Struggle for African American Education in Antebellum America (Chicago, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42. Neem, Democracy’s Schools, 88.

43. Hurst, J. W., The Growth of the American Law: The Law Makers (Boston, 1950), 93.Google Scholar

44. Gillis, Brendan, “Conduits of Justice: Magistrates and the British Imperial State, 1732–1834” (PhD diss.: Indiana University, 2015).Google Scholar

45. On police power, see note 3 above.

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47. Edwards, People, 47–53.

48. Ibid., 5–7, 65–66.

49. On this point, in addition to Edwards, People (quote at 7), see also Jones, Martha S., Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (New York, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50. Edwards, People, 11.

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53. Edwards, People, 67.

54. Ibid., 68–74.

55. Ibid., 90.

56. Dale, Elizabeth, Criminal Justice in the United States, 1789–1939 (New York, 2011), 23–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For other examples, see Malka, Adam, The Men of Mobtown: Policing Baltimore in the Age of Slavery and Emancipation (Chapel Hill, 2018), 30–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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58. Malka, Men of Mobtown, chap. 1, quotes at 19, 30.

59. Steinberg, Transformation, 120.

60. Ibid., 120–21, 148–49.

61. A good overview can be found in Johnson, David R., American Law Enforcement: A History (St. Louis, 1981).Google Scholar Johnson argues that the rise of professional police forces enabled the public sector to protect the peace not only more effectively but also in better alignment with the rule of law. The big shift he notes is from an era of citizen-officers who responded to crimes when called upon by justices of the peace and other local magistrates, to professional police forces designed to prevent criminal activity. In contrast, Malka, Mob Town, 62–85, 176–86, cautions against drawing too stark a distinction between popular and professional policing, noting that both reinforced the white male citizenry’s oversight of black people and relied on extralegal forms of violence. In Baltimore, “white popular policing” (176) continued to thrive even as Baltimore created a salaried police force.

62. Wilson and Livingston, quoted in Kopel, David B., “The Posse Comitatus and the Office of Sheriff: Armed Citizens Summoned to the Aid of Law Enforcement,” Journal of Crime and Criminology 104, no. 4 (2015), at 793, 795;Google Scholar Rao, Gautham, “The Federal Posse Comitatus Doctrine: Slavery, Compulsion, and Statecraft in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America,” Law and History Review 26, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 1–56,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. 9–15.

63. Hadden, Slave Patrols. Hammond quoted at 6.

64. Hadden, Slave Patrols, 45–47, 73–79, 102–4.

65. Quintana, “Slavery and the Conceptual History of the Early U.S. State”; Samantha Seeley, “Freedom, Race, and Forced Migration in the Early American Republic” (PhD diss.: New York University, 2014).

66. Discussion of New York from Johnson, American Law Enforcement, 26–27.

67. Johnson, American Law Enforcement, 28–31. On how professionalized police forces served to reinforce white supremacy, see Malka, Men of Mobtown.

68. Rao, “The Federal Posse Comitatus Doctrine.” Discussing customs officials, Parrillo, Against the Profit Motive, chap. 6, argues that when federal officers were locally situated, they could rely on their status and networks to enforce duties, but, as customs officers became more distant partisan appointments, they lost the capacity for effective enforcement because they lost their connections to the community. On customs officers, see also Rao, , National Duties: Customs Houses and the Making of the American State (Chicago, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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78. McCreedy, “Palladium of Liberty.”

79. Gerstle, Liberty and Coercion, 37–38; McCreedy, “Palladium of Liberty,” chap. 13.

80. For discussions on more recent eras, see Kramer, Catherine, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker (Chicago, 2016);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Berger, Peter and Neuhaus, Richard John, To Empower People: From State to Civil Society (Washington, D.C., 1996).Google Scholar

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