The bloated and all-pervasive Federal bureaucracy which now rules the American people from Washington, D.C. did not arise overnight. Instead, as the author of this important volume documents, the usurpations of the Lincoln Administration during the War of 1861 and that of the Radical Republican Congress during Reconstruction were the fundamental causes of the existing political conditions of today. Pierce also discusses the inherent flaws in the Constitution which were the result of compromise between the quarreling factions at the Convention of 1787, and which would later lead to corruptions dangerous to the liberties of the people of the several States. The book concludes with a chapter entitled, "How to Restore the Democratic Republic."