The American Republic, by Orestes Brownson, was first published in 1865, when the nation had just emerged from a civil war that had come harrowingly close to shattering its very existence. In the period immediately before and during the war - as in just about every other period of his life - Brownson had carved out for himself a unique, and seemingly contradictory, niche as a pro-Union, anti-abolutionist, anti-slaveholding journalist. In this magisterial work, Brownson presents his views on the nature, authority, origin, and constitution of the American state in light of the problems posed by secession and reconstruction. The resulting volume, as Peter Augustine Lawler urges in a penetrating introduction that compares Brownson's analysis to that of Tocqueville, is one of the more original and important works of American political theory ever to have appeared.