civil war question?

Question

how did the tension between states' rights and national government authority manifest itself in the events leading up to the Civil War?

anybody think they know the answer to this?

Answer 1

The answer is that it was clearly about State's Rights - the Right of the States to HAVE SLAVERY. It was slavery, slavery, and slavery that was the root cause. The South would not give it up, and the North (especially New England righteous puritan types) would not accept this. Neither side was willing to compromise any further - after compromises in 1820 over Missouri, in 1850 over territory added after the Mexican War, and further in the mid 1850s over Kansas and Nebraska. Both sides were wrong in my opinion. It was not necessary for 600,000 young men to die (mostly from diseases picked up in crowded army camps). The US spent over 4 billion dollars on the war and killed or maimed a generation of young men. The money could have been used to compensate the small percentage of men who actually owned slaves in the South - buy their freedom. But of course then the question would be "where would the four million freed African Americans live?" Southerners were concerned or even afraid that the freed slaves would be rather angry with their former masters, and in many areas of the South the slaves had outnumbered the white Americans.
The current thinking in the academic history community is that slavery was the main cause. Slavery is simply wrong. After the war, the South realized that the cause of slavery could not be morally defended in world opinion, so the cry became "state's rights" as the cause of the war.

Answer 2

What is called the Civil War was the kiss of death for state's rights. It placed the federal government firmly in the driver's seat. Slavery was a side issue of minor importance.