States' Rights (Issue)

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STATES' RIGHTS (ISSUE)

Because of its fundamental relationship to the political and constitutional foundations of the United States, the issue of states' rights has been an enduring problem throughout the history of the United States. At its core, the matter raised questions of sovereignty and authority, and often overlapped other questions, like whether the country should have a centralized or decentralized government. Moreover, it had strong implications for the American economy, especially regarding trade, tariffs, banking, and labor, among others.

In the early eighteenth century the thirteen colonies of British North America had more in common with the Crown, especially economically, than they did with each other. But as that relationship slipped into acrimony—especially during the American Revolution (1775–1783)—the fight against a common foe, the forces of independence, the communication between the respective social classes in the different regions of the country and the evolution to statehood forged a greater sense of unity among the former thirteen colonies. Under the Articles of Confederation (adopted in 1777) the states retained political autonomy. The Confederation Congress had little authority and was unable to exert any effective control over the economic activity of individual states as well as the states' relations with foreign countries and with each other. The national government could not levy taxes, issue money, or enforce a uniform tariff on imports and exports. Congress could only ask the states for funds with which to fight the war and carry out the work of government.

When the framers of the Constitution assembled in the spring of 1787, they were faced with the sobering evidence of what independence had wrought. The machinery of government was clearly too cumbersome for the tasks that it had to accomplish. Yet they also remained dedicated to their revolutionary ideal of more liberty and less government. In the end, the Constitution that they produced reflected both realities. In the Tenth Amendment, the framers granted to the states a kind of states' bill of rights which specified that ". . . powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution; nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively. . . ." The Constitution did give the federal government the powers to tax, borrow, and coin money, regulate foreign and interstate commerce, establish a postal service, and issue patents and copyrights, but it also imposed constraints on the government's ability to regulate trade. The federal government could not impose duties on exports, could not discriminate against the ports of any state in its commercial regulations, could not restrict a carrier's freedom to enter or leave a state without stopping in another, and finally, could not extend any trade barriers between the states themselves.

When the First Bank of the United States (1791–1811) was chartered, the issue of states' rights was again raised. According to its charter, the First Bank was allowed to operate in all states, which gave it a considerable edge over state banks that could only operate in the states that chartered them. The First Bank maintained a large banking network in various parts of the country and it was also able to hold more notes than state banks. Proponents of states rights and advocates of free commerce, therefore, were instrumental in defeating legislation to re-charter the First Bank in 1812. They feared that it posed obstacles to the growth of state banks. This controversy continued when, years later, many critics blamed the Second Bank of the United States (1816–1836) for the panic (the word that was used for depression) of 1819. Maryland, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Ohio enacted laws to tax branches of the Second Bank out of existence. However, the Supreme Court handed down decisions in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and Osborne v. United States Bank (1824) which declared unconstitutional any state law that restricted the activities of the Second Bank of the United States.

During the 1820s and early 1830s, during heated Congressional debate over tariffs, the issue of states' rights again came to the fore. Southern states complained that the North was benefiting from tariffs at the expense of the South. Then Vice President John C. Calhoun (1782–1850), himself a southerner, put forth a states' rights constitutional doctrine called "Nullification". In what came to be known as the "nullification crisis" the legislature of South Carolina declared that the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were "unauthorized by the Constitution" and therefore "null, void . . . [and] . . .not binding upon this State, its officers or citizens." The passage of that declaration of nullification, in the view of Calhoun and the legislature of South Carolina, automatically made the disputed law unconstitutional. Then the U.S. Congress was obliged to pass an amendment to the Constitution explicitly affirming the constitutionality of the law. At that point, the state had the option of either abiding by the law or else peacefully seceding from the Union.

Such a doctrine would have severely limited the central power of the federal government. Although the president at the time, Andrew Jackson, was on some issues friendly to states' rights, he was enraged over this challenge to the sovereignty of the national government. He threatened to have Vice President Calhoun hanged, he mobilized the U.S. Navy, and had the U.S. Congress pass a "force bill" to ensure the effective implementation of the disputed tariff laws.

The nullification crisis was only a part of the cause for Southern economic and political discontent. The episode represented growing sectional differences between North and South. Tariffs, which tended to favor manufactured goods over raw goods, reaffirmed the agrarian South's subordinate relationship to the North. After the Panic of 1837, Southern cotton went into a sustained decline while industrial commerce in the North continued to prosper. Moreover, because western expansion in the United States afforded Northeastern business interests other sources for raw goods, manufacturers became less dependent on the South as a supplier of raw materials.

Southerners believed that they were victims of a sinister conspiracy supported by Northern bankers, merchants, manufacturers, and their political agents. Southerners accused them of rigging prices, of manipulating the money market, and of causing much of the wealth of the South to flow steadily into the hands of the northern economic elite. On top of this, the South resented the Abolitionist Movement against slavery. In reaction to the anti-slavery movement, Southerners began to extol the differences between their agrarian economy and that of the industrialized North. Southerners characterized the institution of slavery as essential to their economy and their way of life. Slavery was a necessary labor regime, they argued, and the slaves themselves were almost like family members. Accordingly, they rooted their economic arguments in agrarian values and paternalistic notions of family and grounded their political voices in the rights of each individual state.

When the Southern vote against then-Presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln (1861–65) proved futile in the election of 1860, most South Atlantic states turned to what they believed was their only legal recourse— the right to secede from the Union. Secession was most popular in the deep South wherever the plantation system and slavery were well established. While many people in the upper South felt strong ties to the Union, they had a strong affinity for vested southern values, the southern agrarian economy, and the institution of slavery. Coupled with a strong belief in the rights of the states which dated back to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the issue of states' rights was never so strongly articulated as when the southern states exercised what they believe was a Constitutional right to secede. The outcome of that action, the Civil War and Reconstruction, resulted in settling the questions of precedence—the rights of states or the superior authority of a republican form of government.