***I would like an answer which focuses on (or at least covers) issues other than slavery.
I'm sure we've all heard by now the retort to "the Civil War was fought over states' rights!" as "okay, but a state's right to what?" and while that's usually used rhetorically, it got me thinking. It's very easy to find information regarding the law when it came to slavery, and on that subject at least it's pretty obvious that the Confederacy didn't stand for state's rights at all, it simply stood for slavery. While states were free to choose in the Union whether they'd be free or not, in the Confederacy states were not allowed to outlaw it. It was baked into their constitution. Furthermore, pre-secession the same states were in favor of federal level laws restricting the ability of the Northern states to... "interfere" with the slave-status of a person who entered their territory. To be clear, I am not asking this question from the ahistorical perspective that the Civil War was not fought over slavery. Rather, I would like to see how well the argument of "state's rights" holds up even if we are willing to ignore the issue of slavery, as proponents of this argument usually want to do.
As a related question, I'm interested to know if the rhetoric of the Southern states being pro-states' rights existed before/during the Civil War at all. In other words, did the Lost Cause fallacy invent this narrative or merely tunnel vision on it?
I apologize if this is a duplicate question. I suspected it would be, but all the searching I did only turned up information about the onset of the Civil War, and not on the actual structure of government of the Confederacy.
Thank you!
(1 / 3)
TL;DR: The one issue the states' rights proponents could point to that didn't have much to do with slavery was the national bank, and possibly "internal improvements". Before the war, everything else either had to do with slavery, or else they were inconsistent on it. During the war, they became even more inconsistent and sold out many of their other "states' rights" principles in order to remain consistent in their support and preservation of slavery.
FULL ANSWER:
From the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33 on, the "states' rights" position was almost always tied up with slavery: continued opposition to the Missouri Compromise, enactment of a more expansive Fugitive Slave Act, the right of slavery in federal territories, the right of "slave transit" along shared waterways and even into free states, the protection of slavery in Washington, D.C., to name just the most major issues.
Before the 1830s, the "states' rights school" could, to some degree, be separated from the issue of slavery. However, not entirely. The two most thorough treatments on the subject before the Nullification Crisis are St. George Tucker's 1803 book View of the Constitution of the United States with Selected Writings, and John Taylor of Caroline's 1820 book Constructions Construed and Constitutions Vindicated. In both, the authors both discuss slavery, and both conclude that it is a "state's right". However, they do talk about several other issues. Some of them are directly or indirectly tied to slavery. A few are not. The following are the most common "states' rights" positions before the annexation of Texas became an issue in the mid-1830s, when it threatened to upend the Missouri Compromise. This was followed a few years later by the Mexican-American War. From that point forward, any new "states' rights" position had to do with slavery in some way or another.
THE MOST COMMON "STATES' RIGHTS" POSITIONS BEFORE THE MID-1830s
The Constitution is a compact, an agreement entered into by states, not by a unified national body of people. It's not a proper government, but more like a treaty or alliance.
This compact is voluntary. Any state can leave at-will, without first getting permission from the other states. The states are to be the sole decision-maker on what makes for a valid cause to withdraw from the compact.
Related, the states have the right to overthrow the federal government, if their voluntary withdrawal is met with resistance.
States can "nullify" federal laws insofar as those laws apply within their own state borders. This was particularly important in regards to taxes, tariffs, and other such monetary laws. States get to decide for themselves what is U.S. Constitutional, and what federal laws they want to follow. Some states' right-ers also interpreted this to include the ability to resist the war power of the federal government. If the feds declared war, a state could "nullify" the declaration and choose not to participate, and not pay any tax in support or pay back the war debts. They could also "nullify" a call for state militia troops by the federal government for use in the "common defense" of the United States.
The Supreme Court has no right to "judicial review" of state laws. The states have a "states' right" to interpret the U.S. Constitution for themselves, as it relates to an internal state law. The Supreme Court can only settle lawsuits involving more than one state, or lawsuits in which the U.S. government itself is a party, or other lawsuits involving the U.S. government as a whole, such as cases involving ambassadors, or federal, non-state territory.
The federal government cannot interfere with private property (in slaves). For that matter, some states' right-ers (like Taylor) took this a step further and said that states couldn't interfere with private property, either. If a private individual owned people as property, only the slaveholder could emancipate them. No government should be allowed to get involved. (For what it's worth, Tucker disagreed with Taylor. Tucker believed that property rights were a "state right" that the federal government couldn't interfere with, but states could, if they wanted to, enact "gradual emancipation" that would free the children of currently-enslaved people, because nobody had the right of property in the yet-to-be-born. Tucker himself was a slaveholder and proponent of "gradual emancipation" in his home state of Virginia.)
The federal government cannot establish a national bank. It was also unconstitutional for the federal government to grant monopolies, exclusive franchises, or exclusive contracts to private companies or individuals.
The federal government cannot engage in the building of "internal improvements". That is, infrastructure projects, such as the building of roads, bridges, railroads, harbors, canals, and so on. The only infrastructure the federal government could provide had to be directly engaged in national security—forts, armories, and so on. Some states' right-ers offered an exception for international-related infrastructure, such as harbors at seaports used for international commerce. But nothing internal was allowed, even if it crossed state lines such as a road or railroad. That should be left up to each state, or the states negotiating with each other.
The federal government cannot put conditions on a state's constitution upon its application for statehood. This was another issue directly aimed at slavery. It first became an issue during the Missouri Compromise in 1819-20, and continued to be an issue thereafter.
So already, as can be seen, of the nine major principled stances that the states' right-ers took, two of them directly have to do with slavery. One of them (the first one) is more conceptual than anything actionable. The other six are issues that could actually, realistically be put into practice that did not have to do with slavery, at least not directly.