Questions of belonging rest at the heart of the modern liberal democratic state. What does belonging mean? Who belongs? Does belonging depend on there being others who do not belong? What is their relationship to the polity? Does it matter what the basis for belonging is, what the defining characteristics of belonging are? Who decides? What does law have to do with it? The answers to these questions are critical in establishing who can make claims on the polity and who cannot; on relationships among those who live in a polity; and in making a population a people. They highlight, what I call, “borders of belonging.” Though borders of belonging have been fundamental to the human condition throughout history, they are of particular significance in the modern world and especially to the modern liberal democratic state with its assumptions of the sovereign individual, universal equality, and the authority of the rule of law.

This book traces the borders of belonging at a particular, formative moment in the long history of the development of the modern liberal democratic state: the nineteenth-century establishment and consolidation of the United States. The language of the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the U.S. Constitution expressed a powerful vision of the fundamental right to freedom, liberty, and equality. Looked at one way, that vision was incrementally transformed into a lived reality for a broader and broader number of Americans over the course of the long nineteenth century.