In the early years of the United States, legal systems were far more localized and flexible. But elites preferred consistency over flexibility, and the rich could afford the more bureaucratic legal institutions that ordinary people could not.
With printing of the Continental notes in 1775, Webster feared people would think you could finance the Revolutionary War by printing paper money. We should have listened!
Regulation of immigrants was almost exclusively the domain of state governments during the first 100 years of the United States. Many doubted if federal involvement was Constitutional.
