1. Here's a short thought experiment that might help students or others understand why historians today reject "states' rights" as the cause of the Civil War. Imagine that 150 years from now, someone tells you that conservatives in 2020 were defenders of states' rights ...
2. That person would be able to produce lots of quotes seeming to support their point. A Texas governor, e.g., saying Texas knows best how to handle its own coronavirus response. Resistance to federal stimulus dollars, etc.
3. But 150-year-old You would remember that 2020 was more complex. You'd point out that Democratic mayors and governors asserted local rights to issue mask orders. And that Republicans supported federal power being used against protestors.
4. And that some conservatives who trumpeted the virtues of federalism were also hyper-nationalists who insisted deference be shown to the flag & wanted to curtail school curricula that questioned American exceptionalism.
5. In other words, 150-year-old You would remember that "states' rights" cut both ways & popped up in arguments across the political spectrum. It would not explain the roots of political polarization and division in this moment.
6. That's what historians today know about the United States 150 years ago as well. They are able to put quotes from secessionists about states' rights in a wider historical context about antebellum politics.
7. Historians of that antebellum context know, for example, that proslavery secessionists had championed the use of federal power to attack abolitionist agitation and enforce the Fugitive Slave Law.
8. Historians know that free-state governors, legislators, & mayors resisted incursions on local and state power by the federal "Slave Power." And they know that future secessionists were also hyper-nationalists who told abolitionists to love their country or leave it.
9. Thinking about how the history of this moment may be written may help you see why "states' rights" theory was always itself a revision of what actually happened in the Civil War Era. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
10. In short, the true, full story of the antebellum sectional & political crisis can't be explained without centering slavery, not states' rights, as the source of conflict. Leaving slavery out would be like writing the history of this moment without the coronavirus.
