Introduction: Hog Reeves Are Part of the State , Too

Abstract: Historians of the early American republic pay the least attention to the most powerful form of government in that period: local governments. Social historians and legal historians are building a historiography of municipal power in the early republic, however, and this essay introduces a forum to expand our understanding of local governance. Focusing on nightwatchmen, overseers of the poor, justices of the peace, and sheriffs, this essay and forum flesh out the contours of the local state between the Revolutionary and Civil War eras.