Partisan state admissions during the Civil War entrenched Republican Senate power for decades.

Evidence

Republican political hegemony in the 1860s allowed them a head start in the race to admit new states. During the secession crisis, congressional Republicans took advantage of the withdrawal of southern members to admit Kansas as a free, and Republican, state. Over the objections of the few remaining Democrats, Congress accepted the Unionist government in Wheeling as the legitimate government of Virginia, accepted its vote consenting to the partition of Virginia, and admitted West Virginia as a new state. While denying admission to the more populous (but Democratic) Utah, Congress voted to admit (Republican) Nevada when its population was only one fifth that of the next-smallest state and one seventh that of Utah. By the time the South fully returned to Congress … one sixth of the Republican delegation in the Senate came from states admitted during the Civil War and Reconstruction, and three of these four states … provided a nearly solid core of Republican voting strength in the Senate for the rest of the century. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 303

Categorization

• XREF: Pays off into the reader’s question about what makes a rationalizing ideology durable once embedded in law — here admission mechanics, not ideology, locked in one party’s power; connects to Dahl and Riker-style partisan manipulation literature. — connects to: Electoral rules have long served partisan entrenchment across American history — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 83; Admitted states gave Republicans a lasting Senate majority core.; Nineteenth-century Republicans expanded court power to entrench economic nationalism against electoral defeat — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 340 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Admitted states gave Republicans a lasting Senate majority core. #expands (0.95)
• Nineteenth-century Republicans expanded court power to entrench economic nationalism against electoral defeat #corroborates (0.78) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 340
• War expands state power to designate whole classes of people as disloyal #qualifies (0.72) — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 1325