In recent years, the Journal of Policy History has emerged as a major venue for scholarship on American policy history in the period after 1900. Indeed, it is for this reason that it is often praised as the leading outlet for scholarship on American political history in the world. Only occasionally, however, has it featured essays on the early republic, the Civil War, or the post-Civil War era. And when it has, the essays have often focused on partisan electioneering rather than on governmental institutions. The rationale for this special issue of the Journal of Policy History is to expand the intellectual agenda of policy history backward in time so as to embrace more fully the history of governmental institutions in the period before 1900. The six essays that follow contain much that will be new even for specialists in nineteenth-century American policy history, yet they are written in a style that is intended to be accessible to college undergraduates and historians unfamiliar with the period.

On August 13, 1782, Alexander Hamilton complained to Robert Morris about the deplorable condition of politics in the state of New York, and especially the condition of taxation. Morris had appointed Hamilton as receiver of continental taxes for New York, meaning that Hamilton was in charge of collecting New York's share of the “requisitions” of Congress. Under Article 8 of the Articles of Confederation, Congress could raise the tax revenue it needed for the ongoing Revolutionary War only by making “requisitions” on the states—that is, by asking each state to raise a specified sum. Like other states, New York was falling short; four years later, an aggressive tax levy in Massachusetts (to pay requisitions and fund the state debt) would provoke the armed insurrection known as Shays's Rebellion. The decentralized regime that Congress had established under the Articles of Confederation made the national treasury depend on the productivity of the state tax systems. Ironically, this very decentralization invited national officials like Hamilton to tackle the problem of tax reform within the states.

No U.S. history textbook mentions Robert Allen, George H. Crosman, John H. Dickerson, Thomas Swords, or Stewart Van Vliet. Yet in certain respects they were five of the most important government officials in the nineteenth-century United States. Each was a high-ranking officer in the Quartermaster's Department, a bureau of the U.S. army entrusted with military procurement. During the Civil War, the supply depots in which they worked—in Philadelphia, New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis—were indispensable adjuncts to the Union war effort. The magnitude of the procurement project was unprecedented: in four years, these five officers alone paid contractors and civilian employees $350 million. This sum amounted to nearly one-third of the total of over $1 billion that the Quartermaster's Department as a whole spent to equip the Union army. No other single project, in either government or business, involved the expenditure of such an enormous sum. In an age in which few Americans made $2 a day, $350 million was equivalent to the total wartime income of one hundred thousand households. Adjusted for inflation, this was roughly equal to the entire federal budget during the administration of President James Buchanan (1857–61).

“Coal is, perhaps, the most indispensable article used by man. Without it, in time, we should return to a state of barbarism.” So proclaimed the president of Pennsylvania's Pequa Railroad and Improvement Company in 1849. The importance of coal, the official explained, lay in its utility as an energy source, for which he hailed it as unsurpassed: coal was “‘hoarded labor’”—a “treasure reserved by nature to promote and perfect our civilization.” The railroad official's florid tribute to the mineral fuel was hardly disinterested: the Pequa Railroad had ambitious plans to ship a great deal of coal. Yet it effectively underscored the enormous role of coal in nineteenth-century America. It was an age in which, as countless industry boosters proclaimed, coal was king.

As winter descended on Washington in December 1878, the Forty-fifth Congress gathered for what promised to be a hectic third and final session. Emotions ran high. In this era, Congress habitually reserved much of its business for these brief, intense “lame duck” sessions that fell between the election of legislators in November and the adjournment of Congress the following March. Compounding the usual sense of urgency was the startling result of the recent election: the Democratic party had gained control of the Senate and, when the next Congress convened, would control both the Senate and the House for the first time since before the Civil War. Senate Republicans well understood that they had but a few precious months to close ranks and enact legislation on some of the burning issues of the day: civil rights, the currency, the tariff. Yet when the session opened, none of these issues made their way to the floor. Instead, and despite howls of protest from senators eager to move on to what they plainly regarded as more urgent concerns, the Senate assembled on many afternoons for several weeks to debate a completely different matter: a proposed law concerning the rights of inventors. At this critical juncture in American politics, the Senate found itself embroiled in a long and complex discussion of the virtues and deficiencies of the patent system.

Admitting, then, that it is eminently desirable to reduce the action of the organized public force to the minimum … shall we not say that government can not relieve itself from the necessity of frequent and minute interferences with industry in any other way to so great an extent as by, 1st, insisting on the thorough primary education of the whole population; 2d, providing a strict system of sanitary administration; 3d, securing by special precautions the integrity of banks of savings for the encouragement of the instincts of frugality, sobriety, and industry? Each of these things is contrary to the doctrine of Laissez faire; yet I, for one, can not find room to doubt that, on purely economical grounds, the action of the State herein is not only justifiable but a matter of elementary duty.

Not long ago, a 43-year-old Wonder Bread deliveryman named John Dugger logged on to eBay and, as people sometimes do these days, bought himself a house. Not a shabby one, either. Nine rooms, three stories, rooftop patio, walls of solid stonework—it wasn't quite a castle, but it put to shame the modest redbrick ranch house Dugger came home to every weeknight after a long day stocking the supermarket shelves of Stillwater, Oklahoma. Excellent location, too; nestled at the foot of a quiet coastal hillside, the house was just a hike away from a quaint seaside village and a quick commute from two bustling cosmopolitan cities. It was perfect, in short, except for one detail: The house was imaginary.