Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: What caused the American Civil War?
Position‹2 of 2: States’ Rights
Argument‹2 of 2: Limited Federal government power

Under the American Constitution, the Federal government could not impose the removal of institutions installed by State governments.

The argument

The states' rights account of the Civil War's cause rests on a particular reading of the Constitution, one that treats the federal government's authority as derived rather than original. The debate begins with Thomas Jefferson, who held that the power of the United States government came from a social contract with the individual states that had been willing to join the union. On that view the states were prior to the federal government they had created, and what they had created by agreement they retained a say over. The union was a compact between sovereigns, not a sovereign in its own right standing above them. The interpretation was carried forward and sharpened by figures including John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis, who championed the notion of individual state sovereignty as a constitutional doctrine rather than a political preference. Two consequences follow from the compact reading, and both were drawn explicitly. The first concerns exit: if the states joined the union by their own act, they retained the legal right to leave it by the same means, so secession was not rebellion but the withdrawal of a consent that had always been conditional. The second concerns the reach of federal law while a state remained. Many Southern leaders interpreted the Constitution to allow an individual state the right to nullify any federal law that the state deemed unconstitutional — a power that placed the state, rather than any federal institution, as the final judge of what the compact permitted. Taken together, these positions describe a federal government whose power was limited by the states at both ends: limited in what it could impose while a state stayed, and unable to prevent a state from going. On this account, the conflict over that limitation is what caused the American Civil War.

Premises

[P1]Calhoun, Davis, and Jefferson held that federal power derived from a social contract with sovereign individual states. [P2] On this reading, states had the legal right both to join and to secede from the Union. [P3] Many Southern leaders further interpreted the Constitution to let a state nullify any federal law it deemed unconstitutional. [C] Therefore, the conflict over limited federal government power — states' rights — is what caused the American Civil War.

Counter-arguments

The primary state institution that was the arguments of states' rights and nullification defended is the institution of slavery. Thus, slavery is still at the core of this issue.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] This does not mean that States' Rights were the primary cause of the Civil War.