Southerners always say they fought for "states' rights" during the Civil War: what particular right was that?

Question

I doubt it was the right to play banjos.

Clearly some people would rather believe it was the right to play banjos rather than what many of you smart people said: it's all about the slavery, stupid! Some want to argue that the federal government doesn't have the right to supersede state's rights. However, how can anyone argue that any state ever had the right to sanction the ownership of a human being by another?

Answer 1

Slavery of course.

Answer 2

The right to make our own laws.

Most people think that slavery was the issue of the Civil War, but it wasn't. The North was becoming more prosperous than the South because of heavy industry, while the South was gradually shrinking with its' emphasis on large agriculture. With the election of Lincoln, Southerners believed, and rightly so, that new laws would be enacted that would benefit the industrial North. That's why there was so much racket BEFORE the election. It was only afterward, when their fears were proved right, that South Carolina seceded. The "rights" they were fighting for were simply to be able to make their own rules in regards to their own states. Which is something people don't understand even today. Like the whole thing with gay marriage. Did you know that no state has to acknowledge a marriage from any other state, regardless of the genders of the partners? So, my parents, married 29 years now, if they moved to another state, and that state chose to, would not be married by that states' laws. Now, back then, it was something as simple, and frustrating, as trade. Back then, with the new laws going into effect, states were losing their right to ensure fair trade between states and other countries. It was all going to go through the government, which meant prices would go way down. Now, that wouldn't mean much for the super-rich Northern companies paying their workers a pittance, but a plantation, slaves or freemen working it, was an expensive beast to maintain. Too much land, not enough workers. Even with slaves, the more you had, the more overseers you had, and the more money you had to shell out for the slaves, the overseers' pay, food, clothing, housing, transportation of the newly-bought slaves to your plantation, having a medic, of sorts, to tend the work-related wounds and childbirth of the slaves, and on and on and on. The new Federal restrictions and taxes on trade would have destroyed the agricultural South, while effecting the North not at all. So, there you go.

Answer 3

The right to govern their state without having to follow or answer to the federal government. This would allow them to control their own taxes, trade, militia and of course in most cases, the right to have slaves.
Understand the siuthern states wanted slaverly because it was an inexpensive method of crop harvesting. Although the purchasing of one single slave was a very expensive venture. For the most part a very large portion of slaveholders made an effort to see that their slaves were fed, clothed and housed. They felt the slave was an 'investment' and it was important that this 'investment' was kept in good order to accomlish it's task, which was crop harvesting, etc. Now granted the slaves were considered property and held in the same esteem as a horse or cow and again, that didn't make a valid argument for slavery.
However, it was the times and the south didn't know of any other way to address this other than maintain the status quo.
Even Lincoln was not against slavery. He was against the SPREAD of slavery. The Civil War really started over states rights and the southern states voting to leave the Union. That was the bone of contention. Slavery became a keen campaign issue during Lincoln's second re-election. Realizing that the abolitionists in the North held many powerful positions, had great political clout and plenty of cash. Lincoln needed a great military victory to get the anti-slavery campaign going and gettysburg afforded the perfect oppurtunity. His stance on anti-slavery in his second term no doubt played a great role in his re-election.

Answer 4

Slavery was a major part of the issue, but it's in the broader context of economics. Much of the South was based on cash-crops (cotton, tobacco, etc.) which they needed to sell in order to obtain necessities from other areas. That is, they were very pro-trade. However, the North was going through the Industrial Revolution, and wanted to secure the domestic market for their products, which made them pro-tariff. Since tariffs are applied universally throughout the country, they would effect the South's desire to freely trade with foreign nations.

There had been something of a balance between North and South regarding federal laws as the Senate would be evenly split between the two regions. However, as new states where being created from territories, they tended to be anti-slavery. This upset the balance and caused the South to realise that they would be perpetually in the minority on the federal level. With the election of Abraham Lincoln, a member of the Republican Party, whose main point was to prevent the spread of slavery into the western territories, the South decided that they needed to take control of their economic destinies by seceding.

In modern parlance, "state's rights" has a different meaning as it relates to conflicts between federal and state policies, especially during the Civil Rights era. But it was pretty much economics that drove the Civil War, and since the Southern economy tended to be slavery-based, then slavery played a key issue.

Answer 5

Remember, it was still early on for the US. The main question was whether the union as a whole trumped the individual states. These states were self governing before the revolution, only they were subordinate to the British Crown. The Confederacy was just that- a loose group of individual states.

Now the question you ask is why don't they come out and say they fought to keep a population enslaved. That was the main question- whether the union could disallow slavery in the individual states. Of course the Southerners were upset; they had an endless supply of free labor in jeopardy.

Answer 6

"States' Rights" is the concept that most every day executive and legislative authority over the private individual should be put in place by the state government, rather than the federal government. There are several reasons why this is felt to be in the best interests of the people.

1-Not everyone feels exactly about every issue as others in the whole country do. View points on issues can be altered by regional, geographic, religious or cultural reasons. People in South Carolina felt they should be allowed to own slave, while people in Maine felt they should not be allowed to own slaves.

2-The individual states are supposed to be sovereign in their own right, so their leadership felt they were not asking the federal government for special rights, rather they felt they were asking the federal government to stop taking away the rights they felt they already had.

3-By allowing the states to make most decisions, the individual person has a larger degree of options and choices. If he does not like the law that is passed in Tennessee, he can move to Arizona and build a fort. If a person doesn't like a federal law, his only option is to leave the entire country.

Answer 7

Let's just get it out the way that slavery is wrong and no one has the right to own another person.

Ok now let's answer the question. When the Southern States joined the Union it was with the constitutional understanding that they could indeed leave the Union. When they exercised this constitutional right, Honest Abe called for 75,000 troops to bring the wayward Southern States back into the fold. This call for troops resulted in Tennessee, Virginia and North Carolina declaring for the Confederacy as they would not wage war on their sister states.

It's really hard for people to accept that the American Civil War was not as black and white as we would like it to be.

Imagine if today, National Guardsmen from Kansas decided to enforce federal authority on the state of Nebraska. Would the governor of Nebraska just sit back and take it??

This happend in the 1860's. Soldiers from Northern States entered Southern States to enforce Federal law. In 1861, Slavery was not high on Lincoln's agenda. He wanted to restore the Union plan and simple.

Many Union Soldiers were outraged by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation following the Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam for you Yankees out there). They were not interested in losing their lives for Black Slaves. Read their diaries...study the "real" history and not Ken Burns retread of all the same tired Civil War myths that we have grown up with since the 1950's.

When Union soldiers invaded Northern Missouri, many of the local youths gathered together to resist the Federal invasion of their state. Among these boys, was Samuel Clemens who with his friends was a member of the Salt River Rangers. (The Salt River is just south of Hannibal.) Of course our young Mark Twain quickly forsaw the futilty of armed rebellion and got the heck out of that predicament.

OK I'm rambling, but the point is that Southerners (and my own family --- we are proud Virginians) served the Confederacy with pride and dedication and never owned a single slave nor cared a lick about them.

Answer 8

The right to enact legislation and cultural codicies on a state level,not specifically given to nor forbidden by the Constitution to the Federal Government, i.e. slavery ownership ,certain laws of taxation and business regulation.

Answer 9

Secession was based on the idea of state rights (or "states rights," a variant that came into use after the Civil War). This exalted the powers of the individual states as opposed to those of the Federal government. It generally rested on the theory of state sovereignty-- that in the United States the ultimate source of political authority lay in the separate states. Associated with the principle of state rights was a sense of state loyalty that could prevail over a feeling of national patriotism. Before the war, the principle found expression in different ways at different times, in the North as well as in the South. During the war it reappeared in the Confederacy.


The States' Rights debate cuts across the issues. Southerners argued that the federal government was strictly limited and could not abridge the rights of states as reserved in the Tenth Amendment, and so had no power to prevent slaves from being carried into new territories.[29] States' rights advocates also cited the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution to demand federal jurisdiction over slaves who escaped into the North. Anti-slavery forces took reversed stances on these issues.

Jefferson Davis said that a "disparaging discrimination" and a fight for "liberty" against "the tyranny of an unbridled majority" gave the Confederate states a right to secede.[30]

South Carolina's "Declaration of the Immediate Causes for Secession" started with an argument for states' rights for slaveowners in the South, followed by a complaint about states' rights in the North (such as granting blacks citizenship, or hampering the extradition of slaves), claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their federal obligations.[31]

In 1860, Congressman Keitt of South Carolina said, "The anti-slavery party contend that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery is right, and that this is a confederate Republic of sovereign States."[32]

The South defined equality in terms of the equal rights of states,[33] and opposed the declaration that all men are created equal

Answer 10

States' rights refers to the idea that U.S. states possess certain rights and political powers in the politics of the United States and constitutional law. These rights are guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, under the United States Bill of Rights. The states' rights concept is usually used to defend a state law that the federal government of the United States seeks to override, or a perceived violation of the bounds of federal authority.

Answer 11

You asked about states' rights, which implies more than one right. Slavery may have been the main issue, but the term "states' rights" refers to Amendment X of the Constitution, which states, "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." They felt that slavery, among other issues, wasn't covered by the constitution (abortion is a good current issue), so the states had the right to decide that issue.