| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

To Enlarge the Machinery of Government: Congressional Debates and the Growth of the American State, 1858–1891. By Williamjames Hull Hoffer. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. xvi, 258 pp. $55.00, ISBN 978–0-8018–8655–3.)
Rejecting old stereotypes of barren politics and governance in the Gilded Age, historians have for years demonstrated a growing activism in the period and a sense of meaningful purpose among political leaders and citizens. Williamjames Hull Hoffer adds to this revisionist literature with To Enlarge the Machinery of Government.	1
How did the American state, at the federal level, evolve from the small-government ideal of the Jeffersonian legacy before the Civil War to the intrusive and capacious administrative apparatus of the Progressive Era and after? Hoffer offers a partial answer through the close reading of congressional rhetoric on a select set of issues debated in the House and Senate from the late 1850s to the early 1890s. The author examines the debates with a creative sensitivity and plucks from them a wealth of insights, although some readers may see his decision to exclude manuscripts, newspapers, and similar sources as missing an opportunity to place his findings in a broader political and social context.	. . .

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