Well, I consider the years of 1861 to 1865 to be pretty darn rowdy for our country.
Were we talking about those years? Hmmm.. I must have missed it.
Excerpted from an article by Thomas J. DiLorenzo:
The death of the rights of secession and nullification was achieved in 1865, and the final nails were pounded into the Jeffersonian, states’ rights coffin in 1913, with the adoption of the income tax, the Federal Reserve, and the Seventeenth Amendment. The income tax declared, essentially, that all earned income is the property of the state, and the state will decide how much income working Americans may keep for themselves by determining the rates of taxation.
The Fed soon became an enormous and menacing tool of political control based in Washington, D.C., with the board of governors. The Seventeenth Amendment, which established the popular election of senators, relieved U.S. senators from the obligations they once had to vote only for legislation that was generally in the interest of the citizens of their states, since they were appointed by state legislatures. After 1913, they were "obligated’ mostly to whomever could give them the biggest campaign contributions.
If there is any lesson to be learned here, it is that constitutional liberty – in America or anywhere else – is an empty slogan unless the people possess the rights of secession and nullification. This is how the founders intended the people to be sovereign over their government. Until these powers are restored – and the Fed, the income tax, and the Seventeenth Amendment abolished – Americans have no hope of ever returning to a regime of constitutional liberty.