At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the USA was a union of 13 colonies along the eastern coast of North America. The constitution of 1789 had given the USA a federal system of government.
This system provided for the sharing of power between the federal government (the government at the centre) and the governments of the member states.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
It allowed the states to participate in the federal law-making process through a legislature called the Congress. Each state had equal representation in the Senate (the upper house of the Congress) irrespective of the size of its population.
A little less than a century after the War of American Independence, severe differences divided the states of the USA, leading to the American Civil War (1861-1865).
In this war, the federal government of the union, supported by the states of northern USA, fought against 11 states of southern USA, which had organised themselves as the Confederate States of America.