[0.E.O]

Slavery was a vehicle- but imagine if the southern states objected to the federal government telling them...oh, I dunno... that they had to buy health care?

What was it the federal government was telling the Southern states they could not do?

[Sherman Logan]

What was it the federal government was telling the Southern states they could not do?

Actually, the southern states were ticked off by too much exercise of states' rights by northern states, which had passed laws attempting to interfere with the Fugitive Slave Act.

Southerners demanded the Federal government take action against these states. The Republicans would obviously not do so, and it was one of the issues leading to secession.

So the only real states' rights issue in 1860 was one of northern states opposing a federal power grab!