“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

economic and political relationships. The victory did not, however, resolve questions of
regional sovereignty or national boundaries. It also did not end factional conflicts over legal
rights and personal reputations. Rather, as we will see in the next few chapters, the local
legal politics of the 1850s and 1860s that arose out of the military and political conflicts of
the proceeding decades possessed within them the seeds for further international warfare.
These struggles in turn were driven by the need to resolve prickly questions over sovereignty
and private law rights. Borderlands courtrooms would be at the center of these clashes as
strands of violence and law again entangled together.
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