In
1858, Lincoln did not believe that the division among Americans would actually
lead to the fall of the national “house,” but it did; in just three more years
North and South were engaged in a highly destructive Civil War. Now, in
2017 the American people are once again face-to-face in unusually severe
disputes. What are the divisions in the American “house” today and could
they lead to another Civil War? I will discuss in a series of blogs six
divisions and whether they could lead to open warfare.
Division No. 1: States’ rights vs.
National government. As President of the United States by 1861, Lincoln argued
that the Constitution never allowed for any state to secede from the
Union. He further asserted that the unity of the United States of America, a new sovereign country created by
the former 13 independent states by the Constitution of 1787, was the
same foundation for American liberties, including the freedoms of religion,
speech, press, privacy, and due process of law. The Civil War
settled on numerous battlefields the constitutional issues of
secession and the superior powers of the Federal government.
Ever
since the highly controversial measures of the Reconstruction of the South
following the Civil War, there have been periodic tensions between some states
that wished to move in a certain direction as opposed to Federal policies going
in different directions. These tensions arose again during the civil rights
movement (perhaps the Second Reconstruction) during the 1950s and 1960s in both
the South and the North (and in the West, too). The tensions of
Federalism once again emerged during the Presidency of Barack Obama from 2009 to
2017. Each time some states, particularly in the South, have
asserted their sovereign powers to nullify or ignore policies coming out of
Washington, D.C.
If the states had the power of states’ rights, then what would they do with
them? During the 1950s and 1960s the principal states’ rights
concerned the power to enforce racial segregation in public places and maintain
discriminatory Jim Crow laws. In the Obama administration, the state
rights advocates advanced state prerogatives concerning where and when women
could or could not have abortions, affordable health care insurance, what to do about
illegal immigrants, gun rights, gay marriage, and access to public rest
rooms. These rights were expressed in constitutional and legal terms, but
the basic concerns were largely social, racial, and religious with some
economic but otherwise powerful partisan political undertones.
Will
states’ rights lead to another Civil War in the future? That seems unlikely today. States’ rights arguments were largely
superficial in 1861 and they remain largely so today. It is
very hard to imagine any state trying to seriously secede from the U.S.
again. I can’t see state "National" Guards fighting
against the U.S. Army. What could happen is not so much a civil war
of armies fighting in the style of 1861-1865, but rather passive
resistance whereby state authorities refuse to back up Federal
authorities trying to enforce national policies opposed by state
residents. There could also be incidents of violence by citizens not
sufficiently policed by local, county, and state law enforcement agents.
In this regard, a civil war in the future would not look like a “war” except by
acts that might look like guerrilla war rather than conventional
war. And some might call such acts "terrorism"?
More
likely yet, there could be a national government dominated by the same
people and same thinking as advocates of states' rights who decompose
Federal agencies and policies. Rather than making Federalism more
contentious, political parties and personalities could mitigate states'
rights concerns, at least in the South and West, by reducing the reach of
the Federal government into the states and encouraging states to manage their
own people. This move might be seen by some as a revolution,
resulting in different kinds of resistance by different people, but it would
not likely result in a civil war.
© 2017 Stephen M. Millett. All rights reserved.
