Blood and Gold: Some Main Themes in the Law in the Last Half of the Nineteenth Century

This chapter discusses changes in American law during the second half of the nineteenth century, covering organic law, state constitutions, and the West. The last half of the nineteenth century was crowded with events and evolutions, the most dramatic of which was the great Civil War. In many ways, wars fundamentally disrupt the operation of the legal system. The Civil War was unusually violent, and it did unusual violence to the ordinary course of justice. It was also a constitutional crisis: the Confederate states had renounced the union, declared themselves independent, and drafted their own constitution. But the war was, in a way, only an interlude. Underneath and around it and before it and after it, vast processes were changing society in fundamental ways. Changes in American law, between 1850 and 1900, were little short of revolutionary. In many fields, the law or the practice looked very different at the end of this period, compared to the beginning.