With A Government Out of Sight, Brian Balogh illuminates a great swathe of American constitutional and political history that we take for granted—the nature and development of government in the nineteenth-century United States. For decades, the question of activist versus limited government has roiled not only American historiography but also American politics. The debate in both arenas has labored for too long in thrall to a sterile, ahistorical dichotomy rooted in modern conceptions of activist government. Fueling this dichotomy are historical myths and memories of the stark clash between Alexander Hamilton's ideas of energetic, hands-on national government and Thomas Jefferson's conception of a severely limited, relatively inactive federal government. And yet the work of such scholars as William Novak, Richard John, Andrew Cayton, and Daniel Feller hints that there is more to the workings of early national government than the conventional wisdom would contemplate. When a well-worn historical and political debate persists to the point that it seems to obscure rather than to foster understanding, it is time to look beyond what we thought we knew. Balogh's new book does precisely that.

Balogh is an associate professor of history at the University of Virginia and chair of the Governing America in a Global Era Program at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. His previous work has examined government and public-policy debates in the middle and late twentieth century. Turning his attention to the nineteenth century, Balogh argues that we should pay attention to what the Americans of that era actually said and did about such matters. With skill and clarity and an impressive array of evidence, he offers an argument that is at first counter-intuitive but on reflection is persuasive and enlightening. Balogh maintains that Americans did indeed expect the general government to foster economic development and territorial expansion, but that at the same time they wanted these vital roles performed as inconspicuously and as unintrusively as possible. As Balogh points out, “The mystery of national authority in nineteenth-century America can be resolved once we recognize that although the United States did indeed govern differently than its industrialized counterparts, it did not govern less. Americans did, however, govern less visibly” (379).

For Balogh, the story begins in late colonial and revolutionary America, when Americans realized that, in their fragile new societies and economies, politics and the constitutional system would be the sources of coherence and structure. In particular, the crisis of legitimate government spanning the period from 1775 through 1801 brought the need for legitimate government that would be reshaped to respond to the needs of a newly independent United States.

In a series of thematic chapters spanning the nineteenth century, Balogh highlights various ways that the general government used its powers to shape the nation and vindicate its interests while not forging a large bureaucracy. First, it wielded legal doctrines creatively to stimulate and encourage economic development—in instrumentalist ways that will be familiar to readers of James Willard Hurst and (though portrayed in a more sinister vein) Morton J. Horwitz. Second, it used targeted subsidies to encourage the construction of internal improvements such as bridges and canals, economic growth, and the development of Western lands. Third, it forged partnerships with state and local governments so that, even though the policies fostered were national policies, the general government's participation in such ventures was muted and difficult to perceive.

For Balogh, the evolution of American government is not a story of sharp, agonizing discontinuities between the halcyon days of an innocent America free of government and a damned modern America addicted to government. Instead, he tells a complex story of continuities between past and present, even while it is shaped and reshaped by changing ideas and conditions. Nonetheless, he highlights linkages and lines of development between the early Republic in the decades bridging 1800 and the national state of the Progressives of the 1910s and the New Deal of the 1930s.

Balogh does not shy away from the less attractive—and sometimes the appalling—uses to which Americans wielded government power to achieve national ends. In particular, he notes how Americans used these powers to dispossess Native Americans and wage war against them, and to enforce and protect the institution of chattel slavery. At the same time, he provides an analogous argument to that voiced by James Madison in Federalist 10. By noting that liberty is a cause of faction, Madison insisted that eliminating liberty to prevent faction is as foolish as getting rid of air because “it imparts to fire its destructive agency.” Balogh urges us to recognize what Madison and his contemporaries understood—that government power is a valuable tool but can be a dangerous one unless used with care, expertise, and close attention.

Political and policy developments since the inauguration of Barack Obama have once more summoned, like the demons cooped up in Pandora's box, myths of clashes between an idealized American past and an overgoverned American present and future. Indeed, one reason why those gathering under the banner of the Tea Party chose that label is that it evokes that idealized past. A Government Out of Sight will do little to allay the fears of the Tea Party movement, but its dense, enlightening argument will do much to further study of our government and politics unclouded by intoxicating myths of dubious reality.