Nineteenth-century America was not a libertarian utopia

Nineteenth-century America was not a libertarian utopia

But beyond the obvious fact that many Americans were not free–women and African-Americans, in particular–lies a deeper reality: Americans in the nineteenth century did not live without rules, regulations, and laws, and did not rely strictly on private contract and personal responsibility to conduct business or to handle social relations.

Contract law in the antebellum 19th century

Contract law in the antebellum 19th century

The common law before the nineteenth century required contracts to be fair and reasonable: a “sound price warrants a sound commodity.” But by mid-century, William Wetmore Story’s famous treatise on contracts recognized that this basic understanding had radically altered. Contracts now required only “mutual assent of the parties” and “valuable consideration.”