Brief History of States Rights

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Brief History of States Rights

• Prelude to confrontation

2

• WAS A CONFLICT BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH
  INEVITABLE?
• DOES THE CIVIL WAR REPRESENT A CLASH OF
  IDEOLOGIES?
• WHAT IS YOUR OWN POSITION ON THE ISSUE TODAY
  STATE INDEPENDENCE, FEDERAL DOMINATION OR
  COMBINATION

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Articles of Confederation 1781

• All but powerless Federal Government
• Can not regulate trade
• Can not create an Army Navy
• Daniel Shays Rebellion

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1787 Philadelphia Convention

• New Document Written
• New Government Created
• Constitution of the United States
• Ratified 1789

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Northwest Ordinance 1787

• NO STATE northwest of the Ohio River could be a
  slave state
• Not to benefit blacks but to prevent a shift in
  the balance of power in the Congress from
  northern dominance to southern dominance

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Conflicting IdeologiesFederalists v.
Anti-Federalists

• Federalists Alexander Hamilton Government by
  the elite
• Anti-Federalists aka Jeffersonian Republicans
  government by the little people the common man

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Federal ActionAlien Sedition Acts1798

• Longer period for immigrants to attain
  citizenship
• President has power to imprison or deport
  foreigners
• Illegal to publish false or malicious writings
  about the United States

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Reaction Virginia Kentucky Resolutions1798

• State laws states have the right to decide if
  Federal Laws exceed agreement between state and
  Federal government
• Claimed that if states decided that the Federal
  Govt. had exceeded its authority the state could
  ignore the law

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Virginia KentuckyResolutions

• These 2 Resolutions become the basis upon which
  the STATES RIGHTS movement rests.

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Missouri Compromise1820

• To preserve balance of power between north and
  south in the Senate Maine is admitted as a free
  state and Missouri is admitted as a slave state.
• Created the line between north and south of 36
  30 permanently dividing the Louisiana purchase
  territory between free soil north of the line
  and slave soil south of it.

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Tariff of Abominations1828

• High tariff proposed to protect Northern
  Industrialists and Western interests.
• Non-industrial South heavily reliant on European
  manufactures is opposed.
• Debate continues for 2 years

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Nullification Crisis1832

• John C. Calhoun tariff will be declared void in
  South Carolina
• President Andrew Jackson asks for Force Bill
  would allow him to use military against state
  of South Carolina
• Represents clash President Federal Power vs.
  State sovereignty

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Great Statesmen
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Wilmot Proviso - 1848

• As the Mexican War came to an end, the debate
  over whether or not slavery should be permitted
  in the Mexican Cession heated up.  David Wilmot,
  a congressmen from Pennsylvania suggested that 
  slavery be forever banned in the newly won
  territories.  He claimed that the 36' 30" line
  which was part of the Missouri Compromise only
  applied to the Louisiana purchase.  Many
  northerners had objected to the Mexican War. 
  They like Wilmot felt that the south was looking
  for new lands to expand slavery.  Southerners
  such as John C. Calhoun of South Carolina were
  horrified by Wilmot's proposal.  They wanted the
  institution of slavery to be extended west across
  the Rockies.  Wilmot's bill that would have
  banned slavery in the west passed in the House of
  Representatives where northerners held the
  advantage.  However the Bill was defeated in the
  Senate by southerners such as Calhoun.  The
  debate over whether slavery should or should not
  be allowed in the new territories would continue
  in the years to come.  

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David Wilmot Senator from Pennsylvania
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Compromise of 1850

• Millard Fillmore of East Aurora was President
• California admitted as a free state
• Territory of New Mexico and Utah can decide the
  issue themselves

• Selling of slaves is banned in Washington D.C.
• Fugitive Slave Act is passed
• In return for admitting the free state of
  California to the Union it put in place the
  Fugitive Slave Law . The Rigorous requirement to
  return escaped slaves made citizens of every
  state personally responsible for treating human
  beings as property.

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1852 Election of Franklin Pierce

• Defeated General Winfield Scott hero of the
  Mexican War
• Claimed he favored the Compromise of 1850 to get
  votes BUT
• Most interested in Manifest Destiny Pierce
  focused largely on foreign policy.   He pledged
  to continue America's Manifest Destiny into Latin
  America.  Pierce aggressively pursued the
  annexation of Cuba and the isthmus of Central
  America.  In light of several revolutions in
  Europe at the time, Pierce held America up as a
  model of freedom for the rest of the world. 
  Pierce also sent Matthew Perry and the American
  Navy to open Japan up to trade with the United
  States though the use of gunboat diplomacy.

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Kansas / Nebraska Act 1854

• Douglas.  Douglas was a Democrat with
  presidential ambitions.  At the time, a debate
  arose over where to build the new
  Transcontinental Railroad.
• A bill creating the states of Kansas and Nebraska
  and allowing popular sovereignty in the
  territory. Passed on May 30, 1854, it was
  proposed by Illinois Democratic senator Stephen
  A. Douglas in an attempt to gain support from
  southern senators for his organization of the
  territory. It annulled the prohibition against
  slavery north of 36-30' that was passed in the
  Missouri Compromise
• Lead to Bleeding Kansas
• Balance in the Senate is again in question

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Abraham Lincoln
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Lincolns Prediction January 27, 1838

• At what point shall we expect the approach of
  danger? By what means shall we fortify against
  it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military
  giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow?
  Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa
  combined, with all the treasure of the earth in
  their military chests with a Buonaparte for a
  commander, could not by force take a drink from
  the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in
  the trial of a thousand years.   At what point
  then is the approach of danger to be expected? I
  answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up
  amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If
  destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its
  author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we
  must live through all time, or die by suicide.  

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A. Lincoln - August 24, 1855

• Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be
  pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring
  that "all men are created equal." We now
  practically read it "all men are created equal,
  except negroes." Soon it will read "all men are
  created equal, except negroes, and foreigners,
  and Catholics." When it comes to this, I should
  prefer emigrating to some country where they make
  no pretense of loving liberty--to Russia, for
  instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and
  without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

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• "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I
  believe this government cannot endure,
  permanently half slave and half free. I do not
  expect the union to be dissolved--I do not expect
  the house to fall--but I do expect that it will
  cease to be divided. It will become all one
  thing, or all the other. June 16, 1858
• As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a
  master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
  Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the
  difference, is not democracy. August 1, 1858
•  

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First Inaugural Address

• In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and
  not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.
  The government will not assail you. You can have
  no conflict without yourselves being the
  aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven
  to destroy the government, while I shall have the
  most solemn one to "preserve, protect and defend"
  it. March 4, 1861