12 - Mapping Power

Summary

Crucial to understanding the development of the state in the U.S. is its geographical reach. In a widely dispersed nation where prior to the 20th century most citizens lived in towns and farming areas, not in proximity to major governmental centers, the central state could be an illusory presence. The Civil War thus opened up possibilities not just for a constitutional but for a geographical remaking of the state, as the U.S. Army eliminated or took control over local governments. But with the end of battlefield fighting, this relationship between geographical and constitutional power was tested anew. In this chapter, I will utilize my work on the widely dispersed occupation of the rebel states to show the transformed geography of the federal state in the years after Appomattox and to investigate the meaning of this new state for people at different geographical removes from it. As I will show, thinking about state development in geographical terms, therefore, helps us at once see the concrete nature of state development and also its dependence upon the imaginative realm, where a proximate state could be the source of an often fantastic power, as long—but only as long—as it could be seen.