A Government Out of Sight
The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America

Returning political history to a place of pride, and combining rich assessments of federalism, political thought, territorial expansion, political economy, and judicial decision-making, this synoptic inquiry convincingly solves a great mystery. By explaining why the vigorous activities of American federal governance were elusive and hard to credit despite the wide arc of public authority, this powerfully argued and deeply researched book puts to rest the myth of a weak nineteenth-century state. —Ira Katznelson, Columbia University

"Balogh's splendid synthesis convincingly describes how the federal government unobtrusively shaped the growth of the nation. Along the way, he also reveals the vital relationship between high political theory and policy implementation in the making of the American state." –Richard Bensel, Cornell University

"In this pathbreaking book, Brian Balogh brings into sight the hidden wellsprings of national political authority in America’s supposedly stateless nineteenth century. Combining revealing new historical research with a deft grasp of both historical and political science scholarship, Balogh not only untangles the mystery of how a national government so putatively weak could govern so powerfully in advance of modern bureaucracy. He also offers an extraordinary historical vista on the governing challenges of our own era. " —Jacob S. Hacker, University of California, Berkeley

"Balogh has produced a thoughtful, at times provocative tale. It will force us to rethink widely held assumptions about the nineteenth-century U.S. government." -The Journal of American History, Williamjames Hull Hoffer

"Balogh’s book was designed to refocus the way in which historians view the government of the nineteenth century." -Linda Spagnola, H-Law

“Balogh’s is a model synthesis… Constitutional and legal history has played a large role in the literature of American Political Development upon which Balogh draws, and constitutional history is fully woven into the account of national state formation that Balogh serves up…. Balogh succeeds in large part because his is a book driven far more than the others [Howe, Wilentz, Wood] by the consciousness of the social scientist; he formulates explicitly articulated hypotheses derived from a synthesis of a specific body of theoretically-inclined secondary literature (American Political Development) and employs them to brush a vastly larger body of literature (19th century American history) against the grain." - Christopher Tomlins, Journal of Legal Education

"The book is powerful and convincing. Balogh does a masterful job telling his story and integrating a diverse number of works into a bigger narrative about our political evolution. It is the kind of big-picture book that has been missing too often from the historical literature in recent time." -Julian E. Zelizer, H-Policy

"...Balogh has produced a stimulating and thoughtful meditation of American governance in the nineteenth century." -Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh, Canadian Journal of History