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Actually you are very wrong on the fact that had Lincoln not been elected the Southern Demoncraps would have set into motion a pla to overturn many laws that had been passed.

The concept of states’ rights is closely related to that of state rights, which was invoked from the 18th century in Europe to legitimate the powers vested in sovereign national governments. Doctrines asserting states’ rights were developed in contexts in which states functioned as distinct units in a federal system of government. In the United States, for example, Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries often referred to the rights of states, implying that each state had inherent rights and sovereignty. Before and following the American Civil War (1861–65), the U.S. states—particularly the Southern states—shared the belief that each of them was sovereign and should have jurisdiction over its most important affairs.

Southern states believing that they were sovereign took offense to the interference by the Federal Government in their jurisprudence on the institution of slavery. Although comprises were made, these compromises eventually failed. They failed because any corporation is in a state of growth or contraction. The institution of slavery was trying to grow and that is when the compromises were made. One of those was the Sovereign States Act also known as the Compromise of 1850.

While the Institution of Slavery was deeply intertwined with this inherent right by the states, it is the reason why people claim the Civil War was about slavery and freeing the slave.

The core to the argument that the Civil War was about State’s Rights is that States may generally legislate on all matters within their territorial jurisdiction. This “police power” does not arise from the Constitution, but is an inherent attribute of the states’ territorial sovereignty. The Constitution does, however, provide certain specific limitations on that power. For instance, a state is relatively limited in its authority regarding the regulation of foreign imports and exports or the conduct of foreign affairs. Further, states must respect the decisions of courts of other states, and are limited in their ability to vary their territory without congressional permission. In addition, the Supreme Court has found that states are limited in their ability to burden interstate commerce.

Each State that seceded from the Union believed it to be sovereign. As such they took grave offense when the Federal Government tried to usurp their sovereign rights in the institution of slavery. Which is why people think the war was solely about slavery. It was an actually about a Constitutional issue between the Federal Government and the States. The secondary issue was the fact that it was the institution of slavery. This is important distinction because we are seeing this play out today but about another issue, the issue of election integrity.

The Constitution makes it clear that the states have the inherent sovereign authority to run elections within their territory how they see fit. However, Congress is currently trying to usurp that state right by trying to pass a law to wrestle how states run their elections and vet their voters. This is clearly a violation of State’s Rights that most people on this forum agree with - States have the authority to vet those participating in the election and how the election is run (think mail in ballot versus in person polling).

The ramifications from the Civil War beyond the freeing of the slaves had many consequences. For one, after the assassination of Lincoln, the Green Backs were de-commissioned. If you want to know the origins of the Green Back and why Lincoln commissioned them, that is a Constitutional discussion for another time. Another ramification from the Civil War was from the courts in limiting State Sovereignty and thus, States Rights.

A federal power that limits States Rights would be the Commerce Clause found within the Constitution. For instance, Chief Justice Marshall wrote in 1824 that “the power over commerce ... is vested in Congress as absolutely as it would be in a single government ...” and that “the influence which their constituents possess at elections, are ... the sole restraints” on this power. However, the issue in most of the early Supreme Court Commerce Clause cases dealt not with the limits of congressional authority, but on the implied limitation of the Commerce Clause on a state’s ability to regulate commerce.

Like I said before, Southern States took grave offense to encroachment of the Federal Government on the sovereignty of each state.

While most cannot separate the freeing of the slaves from the Civil War, the states seceded because the believed the Federal Government was usurping the sovereignty as a state.

State’s Rights was an issue that held up the ratification of the Constitution. As dictated by Article VII, the document would not become binding until it was ratified by nine of the 13 states. Five states almost immediately ratified the Constitution. Other states, especially Massachusetts, opposed the document, as it failed to reserve undelegated powers to the states and lacked constitutional protection of basic political rights, such as freedom of speech, religion, and the press. Virginia being the tenth to ratify the Constitution but only by a very thin margin. The Virginia Ratification (Federal) Convention made a final vote on George Wythe’s motion to ratify, passing it 89 to 79. Virginians reserved the right to withdraw from the new government. The remedy for federal “injury or oppression” included amending the Constitution.

Another modern day example, whether you agree with the practice or not, is the legalization of marijuana by the states. The Federal Government still has marijuana as an illegal substance but states using their Sovereign authority within their borders have made it legal. This is not about whether marijauna should be legalized or not. It is about the states exerting their sovereign authority to legalize it. If, hypothetically, the states were to go to war over the states to regulate the marijuana industry within their sovereign borders, citing State’s rights to do so, there would be people 150 years from that war saying it was all about marijuana not about the industry and the State’s Rights to regulate it.

State’s Rights goes back to the founding of this country and was not just about the institution of slavery. State’s Rights was the core issue of why the South chose to secede from the union. They did so over the usurpation of their sovereign rights when it came to the regulation of the institution of slavery. Freeing the slave was not a part of this argument, initially, as Lincoln himself said many times over. Each state used the institution of slavery as their excuse but in the end, as it was in the ratification of the Constitution, it was about the powers each state had as a sovereign power to regulate commerce and other industries within their borders, this included slavery at that time.