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79-628: The previous year, firebrand states rights advocate John C. Calhoun had urged that a preliminary bipartisan Southern convention be held in Mississippi to address the growing issue of the Federal government placing limits on the growth of slavery. The delegates to the October 1, 1849, Mississippi Convention denounced the controversial Wilmot Proviso , a failed proposal to ban slavery in the Mexican Cession ,

158-586: A Federal Government of enumerated powers." For the first time in sixty years the Court found that in creating a federal statute, Congress had exceeded the power granted to it by the Commerce Clause. In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius , the Supreme Court held that the Commerce Clause did not give Congress the authority to require individuals to purchase health insurance . However, since

237-490: A Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: That to this compact each State acceded as

316-522: A State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party....each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which became part of the Principles of '98 , along with the supporting Report of 1800 by Madison, became final documents of Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party . Gutzman argued that Governor Edmund Randolph designed

395-581: A case which arose out of the Colfax Massacre of Black residents contesting the results of a Reconstruction-era election, the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment did not apply to the First Amendment or Second Amendment to state governments in respect to their own citizens, only to acts of the federal government. In McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), the Supreme Court held that

474-612: A farmer grew his crops not to be sold, but for his own private use. Enumerated powers The enumerated powers (also called expressed powers , explicit powers or delegated powers ) of the United States Congress are the powers granted to the federal government of the United States by the United States Constitution . Most of these powers are listed in Article I, Section 8 . In summary, Congress may exercise

553-657: A longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy ; To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces ; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of

632-444: A statement on the enumerated powers by Chief Justice Marshall in the case McCulloch v. Maryland : This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers. The principle, that it can exercise only the powers granted to it, would seem too apparent, to have required to be enforced by all those arguments, which its enlightened friends, while it was depending before the people, found it necessary to urge; that principle

711-401: Is largely up to Congress and not the courts to determine what means are "necessary and proper" in executing one of its enumerated powers. It is often known as the "elastic clause" because of the great amount of leeway in interpretation it allows; depending on the interpretation, it can be "stretched" to expand the powers of Congress, or allowed to "contract", limiting Congress. In practical usage,

790-481: Is now universally admitted. Another school of thought is referred to as loose construction. They often refer to different comments by Justice Marshall from the same case: We admit, as all must admit, that the powers of the Government are limited, and that its limits are not to be transcended. But we think the sound construction of the Constitution must allow to the national legislature that discretion with respect to

869-713: The Civil Rights Cases (1883), the Supreme Court allowed segregation by striking down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 , a statute that prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodation. It again held that the Equal Protection Clause applied only to acts done by states, not to those done by private individuals, and as the Civil Rights Act of 1875 applied to private establishments, the Court said, it exceeded congressional enforcement power under Section 5 of

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948-623: The Dred Scott decision —all triumphs of the Slave Power —did far more than either tariffs or internal improvements, which in their origin were also southern measures, to destroy the very memory of states' rights as they existed in 1789. Whenever a question arose of extending or protecting slavery, the slaveholders became friends of centralized power, and used that dangerous weapon with a kind of frenzy. Slavery in fact required centralization in order to maintain and protect itself, but it required to control

1027-474: The South Carolina Exposition and Protest in 1828, written in response to the " Tariff of Abominations ". Exposition and Protest was the work of South Carolina senator and former vice president John C. Calhoun , formerly an advocate of protective tariffs and internal improvements at federal expense. South Carolina 's Nullification Ordinance declared that both the tariff of 1828 and

1106-590: The New Deal , and then World War II saw further growth in the authority and responsibilities of the federal government. The case of Wickard v. Filburn allowed the federal government to enforce the Agricultural Adjustment Act , providing subsidies to farmers for limiting their crop yields, arguing agriculture affected interstate commerce and came under the jurisdiction of the Commerce Clause even when

1185-512: The Supreme Court have broadly interpreted the enumerated powers, especially by deriving many implied powers from them. The enumerated powers listed in Article One include both exclusive federal powers , as well as concurrent powers that are shared with the states, and all of those powers are to be contrasted with reserved powers that only the states possess. Article I, Section 8 of

1264-510: The state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution , reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the Tenth Amendment . The enumerated powers that are listed in the Constitution include exclusive federal powers , as well as concurrent powers that are shared with the states, and all of those powers are contrasted with the reserved powers —also called states' rights—that only

1343-606: The tariff of 1832 were null and void within the state borders of South Carolina. This action initiated the Nullification Crisis . Passed by a state convention on November 24, 1832, it led, on December 10, to President Andrew Jackson 's proclamation against South Carolina, which sent a naval flotilla and a threat of sending federal troops to enforce the tariffs; Jackson authorized this under color of national authority, claiming in his 1832 Proclamation Regarding Nullification that "our social compact in express terms declares, that

1422-464: The Confederacy's actions during the war: The attempts of the Confederacy to annex Missouri and Kentucky , for example, against the will of these states, prove the hollowness of the pretext that it is fighting for the rights of the individual states against the encroachments of the Union. On the individual states that it considers to belong to the "South" it confers, to be sure, the right to secede from

1501-800: The Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to

1580-451: The Constitution, are constitutional. Interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause has been controversial, especially during the early years of the country. Strict constructionists interpret the clause to mean that Congress may make a law only if the inability to do so would cripple its ability to apply one of its enumerated powers. Loose constructionists , on the other hand, believe it

1659-502: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights, and the reality that the slave-power represented, as what they describe as an anti-democratic, counter-republican, oligarchic, despotic, authoritarian, if not totalitarian, movement for ownership of human beings as the personal chattels of the slaver. As this cognitive dissonance increased, the people of

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1738-636: The Enumerated Powers Act into the House rules. The Enumerated Powers Act is supported by leaders of the U.S. Tea Party movement . National Tea Party leader Michael Johns has said that progressives often "see the Constitution as an impediment to their statist agenda. In almost all cases, though, there is very little thought or dialogue given to what should be the first and foremost question asked with every legislative or administrative governmental action: Is this initiative empowered to our federal government by

1817-593: The Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison secretly wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions , which provide a classic statement in support of states' rights and called on state legislatures to nullify unconstitutional federal laws . (The other states, however, did not follow suit and several rejected the notion that states could nullify federal law.) According to this theory,

1896-636: The Fourteenth Amendment . By the beginning of the 20th century, greater cooperation began to develop between the state and federal governments and the federal government began to accumulate more power. Early in this period, a federal income tax was imposed, first during the Civil War as a war measure and then permanently with the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913. Before this, the states played a larger role in government. States' rights were affected by

1975-643: The Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof. Article III, Section 3 of the United States Constitution : The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted. Article IV, Section 3 of the United States Constitution : New States may be admitted by

2054-678: The Land" and provides that "the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." However, the Supremacy Clause only applies if the federal government is acting in pursuit of its constitutionally authorized powers, as noted by the phrase "in pursuance thereof" in the actual text of the Supremacy Clause itself (see above). When

2133-647: The North. The North, by contrast, had a growing domestic industrial economy that viewed foreign trade as competition. Trade barriers, especially protective tariffs, were viewed as harmful to the Southern economy, which depended on exports. In 1828, the Congress passed protective tariffs to benefit trade in the northern states, but that were detrimental to the South. Southerners vocally expressed their tariff opposition in documents such as

2212-517: The Northern states, and the Northern states themselves, became increasingly inclined to resist the encroachments of the Slave Power upon their states' rights and encroachments of the Slave Power by and upon the federal government of the United States. The Slave Power, having failed to maintain its dominance of the federal government through democratic means, sought other means of maintaining its dominance of

2291-630: The Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries ; To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court; To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations; To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water ; To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for

2370-564: The Second Amendment right of an individual to "keep and bear arms" is incorporated by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and therefore fully applicable to states and local governments. Furthermore, United States v. Harris (1883) held that the Equal Protection Clause did not apply to an 1883 prison lynching on the basis that the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to state acts, not to individual criminal actions. In

2449-483: The Southerners only advocated states' rights when they disagreed with a policy. Examples given are a states' right to engage in slavery or to suppress freedom of speech. They argue that it was instead the result of the increasing cognitive dissonance in the minds of Northerners and (some) Southern non-slaveowners between the ideals that the United States was founded upon and identified itself as standing for, as expressed in

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2528-545: The Territories—which are the common possession of the United States—to give advantages to the citizens of one State which are not equally secured to those of every other State. Southern states argued against "states' rights" when it benefited them in the context of fugitive slave laws . For example, Texas challenged some northern states having the right to protect fugitive slaves, with the argument that this would make

2607-474: The U.S. Congress to include a statement setting forth the specific constitutional authority under which each bill is being enacted. From the 104th Congress to the 111th Congress , U.S. Congressman John Shadegg introduced the Enumerated Powers Act, although it has not been passed into law. At the beginning of the 105th Congress , the House of Representatives incorporated the substantive requirement of

2686-660: The Union, and the issue of secession was temporarily tabled. In September, the U.S. Congress enacted the Compromise of 1850, and President Millard Fillmore signed it into law. As a result, in November a smaller group of Southern delegates met in Nashville in a second session of the Nashville Convention, this time dominated by the extremists. They denounced the compromise and affirmed the right of individual states to secede from

2765-464: The Union, but by no means the right to remain in the Union. The historian William H. Freehling noted that the South's argument for a state's right to secede was different from Thomas Jefferson's, in that Jefferson based such a right on the unalienable equal rights of man. The South's version of such a right was modified to be consistent with slavery, and with the South's blend of democracy and authoritarianism. Historian Henry Brooks Adams explains that

2844-858: The Union. This second session had little national impact, but the seeds continued to be sown for the American Civil War . Among the prominent pro-secession delegates at the Nashville Convention was Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, who would a decade later become President of the Confederate States . One delegate who supported the compromise was famed adventurer Sam Houston of Texas. States rights Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other In American political discourse , states' rights are political powers held for

2923-604: The United States , and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines , Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in

3002-462: The United States Constitution : The Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified. Amendment XX, Section 4 of the United States Constitution : The Congress may by law provide for

3081-452: The United States Constitution : The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States ; To borrow on the credit of the United States ; To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among

3160-495: The United States, and that the ordinances of secession, and all the acts of the legislatures within seceding states intended to give effect to such ordinances, were "absolutely null " under the constitution. A series of Supreme Court decisions developed the state action constraint on the Equal Protection Clause . The state action theory weakened the effect of the Equal Protection Clause against state governments, in that

3239-611: The United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress; To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of

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3318-429: The United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State. Amendment XVI of the United States Constitution : The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. Amendment XX, Section 3 of

3397-597: The Wilmot Proviso." 176 delegates from Virginia , South Carolina , Georgia , Alabama , Mississippi , Texas , Arkansas , Florida , Tennessee and Kentucky convened at the McKendree United Methodist Church in Nashville for nine days in June 1850. 101 of these delegates were from Tennessee, where each county had been allowed to send whomever it wished. In the other cases, the delegates were selected by

3476-436: The anti-slavery North took a consistent and principled stand on states' rights against federal encroachment throughout its history, while the Southern states, whenever they saw an opportunity to expand slavery and the reach of their political influence, termed Slave Power , often conveniently forgot the principle of states' rights—and fought in favor of federal centralization: Between the Slave Power and states' rights there

3555-466: The case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them. Additionally, several amendments include a Congressional power of enforcement in which

3634-402: The central government, authorizing it to exercise powers deemed necessary to exercise its authority, with an ambiguous boundary between the two co-existing levels of government. In the event of any conflict between state and federal law, the Constitution resolved the conflict via the Supremacy Clause of Article VI in favor of the federal government, which declares federal law the "supreme Law of

3713-401: The centralized machine; it needed despotic principles of government, but it needed them exclusively for its own use. Thus, in truth, states' rights were the protection of the free states, and as a matter of fact, during the domination of the Slave Power, Massachusetts appealed to this protecting principle as often and almost as loudly as South Carolina . Sinha and Richards both argue that

3792-465: The clause has been paired with the Commerce Clause in particular to provide the constitutional basis for a wide variety of federal laws. The defining example of the Necessary and Proper Clause in U.S. history was McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819. The United States Constitution says nothing about establishing a national bank. The U.S. government established a national bank that provided part of

3871-405: The clause was held not to apply to unequal protection of the laws caused in part by complete lack of state action in specific cases, even if state actions in other instances form an overall pattern of segregation and other discrimination. The separate but equal theory further weakened the effect of the Equal Protection Clause against state governments. With United States v. Cruikshank (1876),

3950-580: The convention had not been "called to prevent but to perpetuate the Union." Thus, the Nashville delegates, while they denounced Henry Clay 's omnibus bill and reaffirmed the constitutionality of slavery in a series of 28 resolutions passed on June 10, agreed to a "concession" whereby the geographic dividing line designated by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 would be extended to the Pacific Coast . The convention adjourned without taking any action against

4029-437: The court ruled that Congress's taxing authority was sufficient to enact the mandate, some constitutional lawyers have argued that the commerce clause discussion should be treated as judicial dictum . Chief Justice John Roberts , in his majority opinion, stated that: No other justice joined this segment of the Chief Justice's opinion. The Enumerated Powers Act is a proposed law that would require all bills introduced in

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4108-442: The federal government, by means of military aggression, by right of force and coercion, and thus, the Civil War occurred. In Texas v. White , 74 U.S. 700 (1869) the Supreme Court ruled that Texas had remained a state ever since it first joined the Union, despite claims to have joined the Confederate States of America ; the court further held that the Constitution did not permit states to unilaterally secede from

4187-519: The federal government. The most vociferous supporters of states' rights, such as John Randolph of Roanoke , were called "Old Republicans" into the 1820s and 1830s. Tate (2011) undertook a literary criticism of a major book by John Taylor of Caroline , New Views of the Constitution of the United States. Tate argues it is structured as a forensic historiography modeled on the techniques of 18th-century Whig lawyers. Taylor believed that evidence from American history gave proof of state sovereignty within

4266-401: The federal union is a voluntary association of states, and if the central government goes too far each state has the right to nullify that law. As Jefferson said in the Kentucky Resolutions: Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that by compact under the style and title of

4345-412: The fundamental alteration of the federal government resulting from the Seventeenth Amendment , depriving state governments of an avenue of control over the federal government via the representation of each state's legislature in the U.S. Senate . This change has been described by legal critics as the loss of a check and balance on the federal government by the states. Following the Great Depression ,

4424-399: The government's initial capital. In 1819 the federal government opened a national bank in Baltimore , Maryland. In an effort to tax the bank out of business, the government of Maryland imposed a tax on the federal bank. James William McCulloch, a cashier at the bank, refused to pay the tax. Eventually the case was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall held that

4503-488: The institution null once a particular slave had crossed into a free state . The question was pivotal in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford . The historian James McPherson noted that Southerners were inconsistent on the states' rights issue, and that Northern states tried to protect the rights of their states against the South during the Gag Rule and fugitive slave law controversies. Contemporany political thinkers like Karl Marx also noted this inconsistency regarding

4582-406: The land taken from Mexico at the end of the Mexican–American War . and the slaveholding states agreed to send delegates to Nashville to define a resistance strategy in the face of perceived Northern aggression. Mississippi's legislature appropriated $ 20,000 for the expenses of their Nashville delegates and $ 200,000 for any "necessary measures for protecting the state ... in the event of the passage of

4661-438: The language " The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation " is used with slight variations, granting to Congress the power to enforce the following amendments: There are differences of opinion on whether current interpretation of enumerated powers as exercised by Congress is constitutionally sound. One school of thought is called strict constructionism . Strict constructionists refer to

4740-407: The late eighteenth century to support slavery. A major Southern argument in the 1850s was that federal law to ban the expansion of slavery into the territories discriminated against states that allowed slavery, making them second-class states. In 1857 the Supreme Court sided with these states' rights supporters, declaring in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Congress had no authority to regulate slavery in

4819-406: The laws of the United States, its Constitution, and treaties made under it, are the supreme law of the land" and for greater caution adds, "that the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Over following decades, another central dispute over states' rights moved to the forefront. The issue of slavery polarized

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4898-410: The means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution which will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it in the manner most beneficial to the people. Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit of

4977-401: The non-slave-states' rights were violated both by that decision and by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. While historians in the 21st century agree on the centrality of the conflict over slavery, they disagree sharply on which aspects of this conflict (ideological, economic, political, or social) were most important. Southern states had a long tradition of using states' rights doctrine since

5056-489: The power of establishing a national bank could be implied from the U.S. Constitution. Marshall ruled that no state could use its taxing power to tax an arm of the national government. The case of United States v. Lopez in 1995 held unconstitutional the Gun Free School Zone Act because it exceeded the power of Congress to "regulate commerce...among the several states". Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote, "We start with first principles . The Constitution creates

5135-429: The powers that the Constitution grants it, subject to the individual rights listed in the Bill of Rights . Moreover, the Constitution expresses various other limitations on Congress, such as the one expressed by the Tenth Amendment : "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Historically, Congress and

5214-458: The protest in the name of moderation. Gutzman argues that in 1798, Madison espoused states' rights to defeat national legislation that he maintained was a threat to republicanism. During 1831–33, the South Carolina Nullifiers quoted Madison in their defense of states' rights. But Madison feared that the growing support for this doctrine would undermine the union and argued that by ratifying the Constitution states had transferred their sovereignty to

5293-435: The same time as news of the great American victory at the Battle of New Orleans , the Federalists were politically ruined. One major and continuous strain on the union, from roughly 1820 through the Civil War, was the issue of trade and tariffs . Heavily dependent upon international trade, the almost entirely agricultural and export -oriented South imported most of its manufactured goods from Europe or obtained them from

5372-457: The several States, and with the Indian Tribes ; To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization , and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States ; To coin Money , regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States; To establish Post Offices and Post Roads ; To promote

5451-407: The state legislatures. A small delegation from Louisiana had been blocked from attending by that state's moderate legislature. After heated debate, the Southerners who urged secession if slavery were restricted in any of the new territories were eventually overruled by the moderates. Speaking for the moderate position, the presiding officer, Judge William L. Sharkey of Mississippi, declared that

5530-399: The states and the people therein only if the act was in pursuance of constitutionally granted powers, and juxtaposing acts which exceeded those bounds as "void and of no force": But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the large society which are not pursuant to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become

5609-405: The states possess certain powers to the exclusion of the federal government, even if the Constitution does not explicitly limit them to the states. The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution states: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof ; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be

5688-402: The states possess. Since the 1940s, the term "states' rights" has often been considered a loaded term or dog whistle because of its use in opposition to federally-mandated racial desegregation and, more recently, same-sex marriage and reproductive rights . The balance of federal powers and those powers held by the states as defined in the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution

5767-635: The supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such. In the period between the American Revolution and the ratification of the United States Constitution , the states had united under a much weaker federal government and a much stronger state and local government, pursuant to the Articles of Confederation . The Articles gave the central government very little, if any, authority to overrule individual state actions. The Constitution subsequently strengthened

5846-402: The supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding. (Emphasis added.) In The Federalist Papers , ratification proponent Alexander Hamilton explained the limitations this clause placed on the proposed federal government, describing that acts of the federal government were binding on

5925-412: The territories. Jefferson Davis used the following argument in favor of the equal rights of states: Resolved, That the union of these States rests on the equality of rights and privileges among its members, and that it is especially the duty of the Senate, which represents the States in their sovereign capacity, to resist all attempts to discriminate either in relation to person or property, so as, in

6004-506: The union, against the arguments of nationalists such as U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall. Another states' rights dispute occurred over the War of 1812 . At the Hartford Convention of 1814–15, New England Federalists voiced opposition to President Madison's war, and discussed secession from the Union. In the end they stopped short of calls for secession, but when their report appeared at

6083-511: The union, with the Jeffersonian principles often being used by both sides—anti-slavery Northerners, and Southern slaveholders and secessionists—in debates that ultimately led to the American Civil War . Supporters of slavery often argued that one of the rights of the states was the protection of slave property wherever it went, a position endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857 Dred Scott decision . In contrast, opponents of slavery argued that

6162-428: Was first addressed in the case of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). The Court's decision by Chief Justice John Marshall asserted that the laws adopted by the federal government, when exercising its constitutional powers, are generally paramount over any conflicting laws adopted by state governments. After McCulloch , the primary legal issues in this area concerned the scope of Congress' constitutional powers, and whether

6241-527: Was no necessary connection. The Slave Power, when in control, was a centralizing influence, and all the most considerable encroachments on states' rights were its acts. The acquisition and admission of Louisiana; the Embargo; the War of 1812 ; the annexation of Texas "by joint resolution" [rather than treaty]; the war with Mexico , declared by the mere announcement of President Polk ; the Fugitive Slave Law ;

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