The limits of sovereignty [[electronic resource] ] : property confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War / / Daniel W. Hamilton

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910453875903321
• Autore: Hamilton Daniel W
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 2007
• ISBN: 1-281-95706-2; 9786611957063; 0-226-31486-3
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (240 p.)
• Disciplina: 973.7/1
• Soggetti: Enemy property - United States - History - Civil War, 1861-1865; Electronic books.; United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Law and legislation; United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Confiscations and contributions; United States History Civil War, 1861-1865 Claims
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [173]-215) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Legislative property confiscation before the Civil War -- Radical property confiscation in the Thirty-seventh Congress -- The conservative assault on confiscation -- The moderate coup -- The Confederate Sequestration Act -- The ordeal of sequestration -- Civil War confiscation in the reconstruction supreme court -- The limits of sovereignty.
• Sommario/riassunto: Americans take for granted that government does not have the right to permanently seize private property without just compensation. Yet for much of American history, such a view constituted the weaker side of an ongoing argument about government sovereignty and individual rights. What brought about this drastic shift in legal and political thought? Daniel W. Hamilton locates that change in the crucible of the Civil War. In the early days of the war, Congress passed the First and Second Confiscation Acts, authorizing the Union to seize private property in the rebellious states of the Confederacy, and the ; Confederate Congress responded with the broader Sequestration Act. The competing acts fueled a fierce, sustained debate among legislators and lawyers about the principles underlying alternative ideas of private property and state power, a debate which by 1870 was increasingly dominated by today's view of more limited government power. Through its exploration of this little-studied consequence of the debates over confiscation during the Civil War, The Limits of Sovereignty will be essential to an understanding of the place of private property in American law and legal history.