| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Andrew C. Lenner. The Federal Principle in American Politics, 1790–1833. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. 2001. Pp. xii, 223. Cloth $75.00, paper $24.95.

Recent books by Forrest McDonald and Rogan Kersh have reinvigorated the study of issues of national union and states' rights in American history. McDonald's States' Rights and the Union, 1776–1787: Imperium in Imperio (2000) offers a challenging, idiosyncratic lawyer's brief supporting a states' rights understanding of the nature of the United States, whereas Kersh's Dreams of a More Perfect Union (2001) presents a subtle, nuanced interpretation of changing understandings of union in American history and culture from the Revolution through the end of the nineteenth century. 1

The gap left in the literature between McDonald's and Kersh's studies deals with ideas of federalism. Now Andrew C. Lenner has written a study of "the federal principle" in leading political and constitutional controversies from 1790 to 1833. Lenner tells a story of repeated political clashes over questions of constitutional interpretation; in his view, constitutional controversies are, first and foremost, political controversies, not esoteric disputes relegated to the attention of jurists and legal scholars. Building on this insight, Lenner uses clashes over "the federal principle" to open windows to the past through which we can observe the evolving "culture of constitutionalism" in the early American republic. . . .

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