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Sovereignty over the states. Powerful central government. Trying to lead a nation of states with a handful of power brokers in Washington. Control of states' laws. Usurping the 9th and 10th Amendments.

Specifics, please. How was the federal government infringing on state sovereignty, what was expanding the powerful central government, what laws were being controlled and how were the 9th and 10th Amendments being violated?

One of the immediate usurptions was abolishing the Constitutional method whereby Senators were elected and replacing it with a system where a FEDERAL ELECTIONS board imposes its regulations on and governs the application and campaigning process for STATE representative offices. Now, if a candidate doesn't get an endorsement from their national party's office (which are controlled by national party leaders), they're slated as damaged goods, unlikely to succeed and, unless they're self-made affluent and wealthy, can hardly meet the boards' petitioning requirements. PLUS, the FedGov recently expanded their control over that "institution" with the braintoot of McCain.

Encroachments would come, not so much from sudden, direct and blatant impositions, but from the subtle deterioration of Americans' Constitutional liberties. Whenever a state enacts the will of its people in opposition to federal mandates, the first thing to occur is threats of federal blackmail and extortion through taxpayer funds and services being withheld. The "state" is then most often condemned and made to look as though it doesn't represent its own populus - as if it were the "bad guy". The central government advocate federals then claim they're in opposition to the state, not the people as a ploy to divide.

Those who believe the federal system listens to and cares for them are living in a fairytale world. It has its own agenda, cowering only to a select affluent segment of the populus whose offspring only serve to perpetuate that control clique. The "of the people, for the people, and by the people" is a farce of the first order meant only to pacify and keep us ignorant in check.

From the SC Articles of Secession. Granted, the topics included slavery. But pick another and the compact was still violated:

By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people. On the 23d May , 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken.

Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.

We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.

In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.