I want you to really pay attention this time...
If the feds have any extra-Constitutional jurisdiction over the States, or the people within the States, you DO NOT have a Republic. Therefore supremacy clauses notwithstanding, the Constitution is MEANINGLESS.
Misunderstanding the basics is worse than knowing anything with regard to jurisdiction. Jurisdiction is the lynchpin of republicanism, ignoring it to make a point about a 100 year old war is exactly what the libs want you to do. Thanks.
Excellent presentation of the facts HMS Surprise. I wonder if any of the “federalists” here have ever read the NY, Virginia and Rhode Island ratification documents? They make it CRYSTAL clear that they (the STATES) reserved the right to “resume” the powers of government to their citizens if the federal (now national, it’s no longer federal because federalism is essentially dead thanks to the immorally and highly questionable ratified 14th Amendment) government exceeds if 30 or so enumerated powers in the Constitution. That it doesn’t fit into the paradigm of the BIG GOVERNMENT types here is NOT authoritative in the slightest that the States do not have the right, power and authority to leave. This is not a hard concept to understand.
You have to explain what you mean by "extra-Constitutional" jurisdiction. From the very beginning the federal government could levy excise taxes, establish post offices and roads, coin money, punish counterfeiters. It could also regulate interstate commerce, which came to be quite extensive. So there was some federal jurisdiction over the people within the states from the beginning. The Constitution was designed so that the federal government didn't have to beg funds from the states. Doubtless, the federal governments gotten larger and more powerful over time, but some growth was to be expected.
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You are in a place where a lot of us have been. We get angry about the current state of the country. We look back for a moment when things could have gone wrong. We think we found it in the Civil War. We conclude that if things had gone differently we'd be freer. Then we learn more and realize that it's not as simple as that.
The Confederacy wasn't some libertarian anti-government movement. It was a government itself. In its day as big and in intention as powerful a government as the one it opposed. It was heavily invested in slavery, and maintaining slavery (or the system of control that would have replaced it) would have meant a very oppressive government indeed.
It's also not the case that state's rights means freedom. You've only got to think back a few decades to see that. State governments don't have an inherently greater commitment to liberty than the general public. I'd also like to see less power in Washington and more in states and cities and families and individuals, but "state's rights" is no panacea.
You also have to consider how things looked to people at the time. It's not like there was one wrong path we took and one right path we didn't take. There were all kinds of possibilities, and no one knew where each would lead. The path you favor could have turned out far worse for many than the one you deplore.
Nobody was thinking, "We have to break up the union or someday Washington might create a socialized national health program." No more than they were thinking, "We'd better stick together so we're not pushovers for Hitler or Stalin." Try to put yourself in the place of people at the time and see the world through their eyes, rather than making everything in the past revolve around our current concerns.
Also, things happened quickly, people had to act on the fly, with no knowledge of how things would turn out. As a said, 1861 was something like a revolutionary situation. Secessionists were trying to pull away all the slave territories they could. If you just did nothing and let them have their way, you might have ended up on the wrong side of national border.