Geographies of the nineteenth century American state

This paper uses the full count of the 1850 census to conduct a spatial analysis of state presence in the nineteenth century United States. The results show variation in the geographic distribution of federal, state and local officials. Whereas federal officials and members of the military were located around the perimeter of the United States, postal workers and state and local officials were diffused widely throughout the interior. State presence also varies along dimensions of state capacity. At the federal level, for example, employment associated with fiscal and military capacity increases with proximity to forts and customs houses while the information capacity associated with postal employment is higher in counties with a greater density of transportation links. At the state and local level, counties with higher literacy rates are associated with employment in administrative occupations while employment associated with coercive capacity is higher in counties with larger numbers of enslaved people and increases with proximity to the border between free and slave states. I also find an association between government employment and outputs of state capacity such as funding for public education and census quality. Attention to the multiple geographies of the nineteenth century state connects scholarship in American political development and the historical political economy of the United States with the broader comparative literature on state formation and state building.