Was the Civil War fought over states rights?

[certified hummus supporter 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

Totally not based off a certain recent thread here...

Anyways no (sane, patriot)

[Saint Milei]

Duh

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

The Civil War was fought to defend the right of the free states & territories to exclude slavery from their borders.

[Big Abraham]

The Confederate Constitution, in many respects, gave less rights to the states than the U.S. Constitution.

[All Along The Watchtower]

You mean the War of Slave Power Aggression*

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

You mean the War of Slave Power Aggression*

*Slavers' Rebellion

[S019]

If you are so dumb as to believe that slavery is the only states' rights issue, then yes. If you are a sentient person and recognize that the South had become increasingly radicalized over the slavery issue, had dreams of expansion into the Caribbean and Latin America, had aggressively fought to get new slave states in places as exotic as Nicaragua, managed to literally rig a statehood election in Kansas to get two more slave senators for themselves, then no. At the end of the day, the Southern slaver class was hungry for more and more influence, in fact there's credible evidence that the most radical of the Southern slavers split the Democratic Party in 1860 with the express goal of throwing the election to Lincoln, so that they could use that a pretext to secede.

Secession was a product of increasing Southern radicalism, pure and simple. People forget this but there was a convention in I believe Tennessee around 10 years before the Civil War, where the most radical Southerners suggested secession, but the more moderate members laughed them off. The degree to which the Southerners radicalized even in the last 10 years before the Civil War is truly astonishing. Okay putting all of this aside, why would the South need to secede for states' rights, Southerners had a majority on the Supreme Court and had just won a major victory in Dred Scott v Sanford., also just 6 years ago, large amounts of the West had been opened to slavery via popular sovereignty by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, at least some of these territories would have likely voted to be slave.

Also perhaps most importantly, even if northern states outnumbered southern states and the north gained a Senate advantage, there were plenty of pro-slavery Northern Democrats in Congress, perhaps the most infamous is Joseph Lane, John Breckinridge's running mate, who came from....wait for it.....Oregon. Of course, there's also people who claimed to support "popular sovereignty," and thus were never going to vote to ban slavery like Stephen Douglas. Slavery was absolutely secure for the South, and they knew it, they seceded, because they wanted even more, they eyed the lands to the South, they eyed tariff-free trade with Europe, they eyed power, the status quo would've absolutely preserved their economic interests, thus secession, at least based on history, was not based on the idea of "states' rights."

[dead0man]

no

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

no

Yes, Frederick M Vinson said that if Jefferson wanted Blks to be free he would of wrote it in the Bill of Rights not in the 14/15th Amendment, states have the rights to abridge freedoms and poor people whom couldn't afford an attord didn't have Public Defender's until 1965

The only reason why we had desegregation during that time was due to WO Douglas whom steered the Warren Crt on riding Jim Crow

Marburg v Madison established Judicial Review and Federal Rights are Supreme and allowed Emancipation proclamation to override Fugitive Slave Law

Madison didn't have to give Marburg his Federalist judgeship, Congress can change it's Appellate not Original Jurisdiction, thus Judicial Review was granted to the Crt

Jefferson and Madison had 100 slaves and were branded and men were lynched, men feet were cut off especially after Fugitive slave law if caught
This is all without a thesis, it too Underground Railroad to set freedom, alot of this has been forgotten no more Shaka Zulu and Roots but it's still history as well as Chain Gangs
 
Federalist meant Federal Rights

Before the Industrial Revolution

[Pink Panther]

Was it one of the justifications given by the South? Yes. Was it the main reason for succession? No. It literally says in the Southern states' secession declarations that they believed slavery was under threat by the North.

[GregTheGreat657]

It was fought over slavery

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Irrelevant.

[GregTheGreat657]

We all know this was meant to summon a certain C-AL avatar

[MarkD]

No, slavery. That has been obvious to me since my teenage years. In the 1990s, I was actively involved in the St. Charles County GOP, and I was ashamed to hear one or two of my Republican friends claim that the answer should be Yes.
I remember one occasion when I and another guy approximately my age - another Republican - were having a discussion with an older Republican about racial issues. The elder fella said, "Now, they are always talking about slavery. I was never in favor of that, ........." I took a deep breath, glanced at the other young guy and noticed he was smirking at me, and we both bit our tongues. The elder fella seemed oblivious.

BTW, states do not have rights, they have powers. Powers are what governments have and rights are for the people being governed. From the language in both the Declaration and the Constitution, that ought to be pretty damn clear. Compare the Ninth to the Tenth Amendment, recognize that they were designed to serve a parallel purpose, and please never again call the Tenth the "states' rights amendment."

[Former President tack50]

It was fought over the right of the states to own slaves

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

The invention of the cotton Gin by Eli Whitley was the biggest reason why slavery ceased to exist but we still had House slaves that WC wanted to own

The biggest thing was Chain Gangs which came with Apartheid until 1955 where the 4 the Amendment Right to an Attorney wasn't given to poor Blk men until 1963 with Gideon v Wainwright and Miranda 1965

Brown desegregated schools but we had Apartheid until 1965 when everything was open