This is not a nuanced historical analysis, and therefore unlikely to be correct or even useful as an abstraction.
Some counter examples: 1861-1865, in which the Federal government raised an Army of the Republic to enforce its (just) will, going as far as burning Atlanta.
1880s, the brief period of the classic Wild West to which you perhaps allude, and in which the Sheriff - the personification of monopolized state force - was the totem of peace and prosperity; the mythical wanton violence of Billy the Kid etc was notable as a feared exception, not a norm.
1890s, the gilded age, the exception that proves the horror and economic maladaptation of private violence: Pinkertons, privately employed, violently suppressing the mere whisper of power and stability accruing to working men.
The economic progress of the 1800s in the US almost certainly had more to do with a frontier of development pressing across a vast and wealthy continent, fueled by prodigious immigration - and by the assurance that the government was the ultimate arbiter of disputes. There were, as a rule, no private armies removed from state legitimization. When there were, as in bloody Kansas, economic growth did not increase.
Some counter examples: 1861-1865, in which the Federal government raised an Army of the Republic to enforce its (just) will, going as far as burning Atlanta.
1880s, the brief period of the classic Wild West to which you perhaps allude, and in which the Sheriff - the personification of monopolized state force - was the totem of peace and prosperity; the mythical wanton violence of Billy the Kid etc was notable as a feared exception, not a norm.
1890s, the gilded age, the exception that proves the horror and economic maladaptation of private violence: Pinkertons, privately employed, violently suppressing the mere whisper of power and stability accruing to working men.
The economic progress of the 1800s in the US almost certainly had more to do with a frontier of development pressing across a vast and wealthy continent, fueled by prodigious immigration - and by the assurance that the government was the ultimate arbiter of disputes. There were, as a rule, no private armies removed from state legitimization. When there were, as in bloody Kansas, economic growth did not increase.