Other Digital Projects

Digital history projects have revolutionized the ways people can learn about the founding of the United States. What follows is a selected list of a few projects where people can learn about this crucial era in American history, with a particular focus on the institutional and spatial dynamics of federal governance. 

  • A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates 1774 to 1875. This landmark project from the Library of Congress constituted the first digital collection to bring together all of the major sources of governance from the early American republic.
  • A New Nation Votes. Creating a Federal Government focuses on the people who held appointed office. Those offices came into being in an era in which the American Revolution generated the creation of new elected offices and established the foundation of electoral democracy in the United States. A New Nation Votes offers a remarkable record of the thousands of local, state, and federal elections during the early American republic.
  • Gossamer Network. This digital project maps the system of post offices in the western United States, analyzing their development and demonstrating their impact. 
  • Invasion of America. Much of the federal government’s activity in the early American republic concerned the territorial West, including the decades-long process of Native American dispossession. This project maps the treaty agreements through which Native Americans lost their land and the United States established its claims across the continent. 
  • Native Land.  It bears repeating that the maps in this project shows the land that federal officials claimed to own, which was not always the land they actually governed and was often land that they had seized through force or coercion. This project maps native societies in North America. 

Want to Read More about Government and Governance in the Early American Republic?

From start to finish, this project has benefited from the work of brilliant scholars in distinct but interconnected fields. These scholars consist of historians, political scientists, and legal theorists. They define their work in various ways: political history, American political development, statebuilding, institutional studies, policy history, and various others. What these scholars all share is a commitment to understanding governance as a very a real process. Grand ideas meet daily practices. Lofty ambitions face the realities that emerge from the extent and limitations of government resources. The politics of personal and party gain exist alongside the realistic understanding of national priorities. And perhaps most important, the process of governing involves policymakers at the highest levels of power, subordinates who must implement national policy, and individual federal employees scattered around the country and around the world. 

What follows is a selected list of books and articles that informs the goals and structure of this project, as well as the text on the Website. This is not an exhaustive list of everything on American statebuilding: that list would be so long as to become useless. Nor does it list every primary source. Rather, it serves as both citation for the Website and a point of departure for those who want to explore these topics further.

  • Adler, William D. "State Capacity and Bureaucratic Autonomy in the Early United States: The Case of the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers." Studies in American Political Development 26,, no. 02 (2012): 107-24.
  • Balogh, Brian. A Government out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
  • Bamzai, Aditya. "The Attorney General and Early Appointments Clause Practice Symposium: Administrative Lawmaking in the Twenty-First Century." Notre Dame Law Review 93, (2017): 1501-16.
  • Bergmann, William H. The American National State and the Early West. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  • Brown, Kate.  Alexander Hamilton and the Development of American Law.  Lawrence: Unviersity of Kansas Press, 2017.
  • Chervinsky, Lindsay M. The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020.
  • DuVal, Kathleen. The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
  • Edling, Max M. A Hercules in the Cradle: War, Money, and the American State, 1783-1867. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014.
  • ____. Perfecting the Union: National and State Authority in the U.S. Constitution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.
  • ____. A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • Edling, Max M., and Peter J. Kastor, eds. Washington's Government: Charting the Origins of the Federal Administration. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010.
  • Edwards, Laura F. The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
  • Ericson, David F. "The United States Military, State Development, and Slavery in the Early Republic." Studies in American Political Development 31,, no. 1 (2017): 130-48.
  • Farber, Hannah. "State-Building after War's End: A Government Financier Adjusts His Portfolio for Peace." Journal of the Early Republic 38,, no. 1 (2018): 67-76.
  • Gough, Robert. "Officering the American Army, 1798." William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser., 43, (1986): 460-71.
  • Hatter, Lawrence. Citizens of Convenience: The Imperial Origins of American Nationhood on the U.S.-Canadian Border. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017.
  • Heidler, David Stephen. Washington's Circle: The Creation of the President. New York: Random House, 2015.
  • Immerwahr, Daniel. How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.
  • John, Richard R. Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
  • Kastor, Peter J. The Nation's Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
  • ____. William Clark's World: Describing America in an Age of Unknowns. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.
  • Kelderman, Frank. Authorized Agents: Publication and Diplomacy in the Era of Indian Removal. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019.
  • Mascott, Jennifer L. "Who Are 'Officers of the United States'?" Stanford Law Review 70, (2018): 443-564.
  • Mashaw, Jerry L. "Recovering American Administrative Law: Federalist Foundations, 1787-1801." The Yale Law Journal 115,, no. 6 (2006): 1256-344.
  • ____. "Reluctant Nationalists: Federal Administration and Administrative Law in the Republican Era, 1801-1829." The Yale Law Journal 116,, no. 8 (2007): 1636-740.
  • McKee, Christopher. A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991.
  • Neem, Johann N. "Developing Freedom: Thomas Jefferson, the State, and Human Capability." Studies in American Political Development 27,, no. 1 (2013): 1-15.
  • Novak, William J. "The Myth of the 'Weak' American State." The American Historical Review 113,, no. 3 (2008): 752-72.
  • Quintana, Ryan A. "Slavery and the Conceptual History of the Early U.S. State." Journal of the Early Republic 38,, no. 1 (2018): 77-86.
  • Rao, Gautham. National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the American State. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2016.
  • Robertson, David Brian. Federalism and the Making of America. New York: Routledge, 2012.
  • Rockwell, Stephen J. The Presidency and the American State: Leadership and Decision Making in the Adams, Grant, and Taft Administrations. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2023.
  • Rothman, Adam. "Beware the Weak State." The William and Mary Quarterly 64,, no. 2 (2007): 271-74.
  • Saler, Bethel. The Settlers' Empire: Colonialism and State Formation in America's Old Northwest. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
  • Saunt, Claudio. Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory. New York, NY :: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2020.
  • Gough, Robert. "Officering the American Army, 1798." William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser., 43, (1986): 460-71.
  • McKee, Christopher. A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991.
  • Skelton, William B. An American Profession of Arms: The Army Officer Corps, 1784-1815. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992.
  • Skowronek, Stephen. "Present at the Creation: The State in Early American Political History." Journal of the Early Republic 38,, no. 1 (2018): 95-103.
  • St. John, Rachel. "State Power in the West in the Early American Republic." Journal of the Early Republic 38,, no. 1 (2018): 87-94.
  • Walkiewicz, Kathryn. Reading Territory: Indigenous and Black Freedom, Removal, and the Nineteenth-Century State. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2023.
  • White, Leonard. The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History. New York: Macmillan, 1948.
  • ____. The Jeffersonians: A Study in Administrative History 1801-1829. New York: Macmillan, 1951.
  • ____. The Jacksonians: A Study in Administrative History, 1829-1861. New York: Macmillan, 1954.