Consequences of no American civil war on state-federal powers

If the American Civil War is avoided does that mean a weaker federal government in the modern era? Would the US be more decentralised?

I'm not sure really as it is likely that the Supreme Court would continue to favour the Federal Government and so its power might still increase anyway gradually.

I guess at the very least no ACW would slow down centralisation.
 
IMHO, its something of a myth that the Civil War directly caused a permanent increase in centralization. By most metrics I'm aware of, centralization is really a product of the progressive era.

On the other hand, my guess is that the Civil War indirectly caused more centralization by (1) taking secession of the table as a political possibility, shifting the balance of power in favor of the feds and (2) shifting citizen loyalty from the state to the national government.
 
IMHO, its something of a myth that the Civil War directly caused a permanent increase in centralization. By most metrics I'm aware of, centralization is really a product of the progressive era.

On the other hand, my guess is that the Civil War indirectly caused more centralization by (1) taking secession of the table as a political possibility, shifting the balance of power in favor of the feds and (2) shifting citizen loyalty from the state to the national government.

Yeah I agree with you on all points
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
It did bring about the first national income tax, which is perhaps the most direct form of federal power over citizens.
 
The Civil War also saw the establishment of the National Banking System. Combined with the effort to drive the state banks out of the currency issuing business, the entire paper money supply of the country was essentially nationalized during the war. To a degree, the urbanization of subsequent decades is directly related to the differences between national banking in the period after the War and state banking in the antebellum period.

Then there's the raw numbers of things: The Federal government in 1850 spent a grand total of just short of $45 million. The Federal government in 1870 spent almost $334 million. The arrival of the permanently high protective tariff in the 1860's was also intimately tied with the centralization of the war years.

It might be better to say that the Civil War represented a major, one-time increase in the size and scope of national government in the lives of average citizens, while the general trend of ever-increasing centralization has been more gradual, although accelerating over time.
 
No civil war means the state's rights Democrats will be stronger. The OTL civil war pretty much eliminated them from power. The last, and only, small-government Democrat elected in the post-Civil War era was Grover Cleveland, and that was only due to James Blaine's corruption. To eliminate the civil war, you need slavery to go away state-by-state. If that is successful, progressives will likely try to enact their reforms in a state-by-state way based on the abolitionist movement. OTL Progressives supported a powerful federal government because that was the institution that ended slavery.

With no civil war, federal government stays much smaller, with modern debates being mainly over tariffs, subsidies, infrastructure, interstate commerce regulation, money, and foreign policy. The states handle 100% of welfare, social security, health and education issues.

Sadly, this also means no 14th Amendment, which means civil rights and civil liberties won't have constitutional backing. Those are now also state issues.
 
It would be pretty hard to avoid The Civil War unless you can find a way to peacefully end slavery in a way that the southern states are willing to accept it.

One reason the Civil Right movement encountered violence in the 1960's is because in the southern states those nerves were still pretty raw even 100 years after The Civil War.

Maybe a timeline where in the early 1800's the southern states felt it was in their economic best interest to end slavery and hire free Blacks at fair wages and thus have the southern states gradually phase out slavery.

The issues that led to The Civil War were issues that seemed to need to come to a head and be resolved much as they were. That is because all the issues leading to The Civil War invloved a lot of strong passions and emotions.
 
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