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States' Rights Indeed...One States' Right in Particular, More Like
Steven den Beste offers the following observation on the causes of the American Civil War:
The proximate disagreement in the Civil War was about slavery, but in a sense the real issue was about the relative roles of the states and the Federal government, and the degree to which states were required to subordinate themselves to the Federal government, and that's how it's often presented (and how Alan remembers it). But it's quite common for those who try to explain the Civil War in those terms to try to diminish the significance of slavery, usually because they have some sort of agenda. If Alan came away with the impression that slavery was "one of the issues" then he probably is a victim of just that kind of historical revisionism.
Slavery wasn't one of the issues, it was the issue. The reason it was a struggle over "states rights" was because the "right" at issue was the right to permit slavery within the state. Any other issues which might have been in dispute were insignificant by comparison.
Indeed. Whenever I find myself in a discussion about the root causes of the Civil War that is the point I strive to make. Without the issue of slavery, there would have been no Civil War. All other disagreements over states' rights versus federal power paled in comparison to this one central issue, which some have called America's "Original Sin". Indeed, the very idea of slavery is so repugnant that it is difficult to reconcile the contradictions between the notion that our founders believed that all men were created equal yet still that certain among us had a right to own others. A right to own other people. Amazing.
It was obvious that it was only going to get worse for the slave states as their relative political power in the Federal government continued to decline. As the Union continued adding states made out of territories in the west, from the Louisiana Purchase, the Oregon Territory, and large areas taken from Mexico in the Mexican-American War, it wasn't going to be possible to maintain any balance between slave and free states even in the Senate because almost all the new states would be free. The 1860 election was seen by the slave states as a harbinger of the future.
That's ultimately why South Carolina seceded, which set off a chain reaction of secession in many of the other slave states. Leaders in slave states didn't want a Federal non-slave majority to force them to eliminate slavery, and saw no way to prevent that if they remained in the Union.
So in that sense it was "states rights" which was the issue. But it was slavery which was the "right" those states were trying to preserve.
The whole piece is well worth reading. You can access it here.
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