United States or Cook Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In 1864 many Democrats and most Republicans joined to form a Union party, and in order to emphasize its non-sectional and non-partisan character they nominated Andrew Johnson as Lincoln's running mate. And now this unschooled, poor-white, slave-holding, Jeffersonian, states-rights Democrat had become President of the United States.
The Democratic party began its career as a States-rights party.
alike by conquerors and conquered, to guide and aid the Nation in the difficult task of reconstruction, and of the new departure, looming up before it, with newer and broader and better political issues upon which all Patriot might safely divide, while all the old issues of States-rights, Secession, Free-Trade, and Slavery, and all the mental and moral leprosy growing out of them, should lie buried far out of sight as dead-and-gone relics of the cruel and devastating War which they alone had brought on!
Unfortunately, also, even the ablest of the Southern Union men were so tainted with the heretical doctrine of States-Rights, which taught the "paramount allegiance" of the citizen to the State, that their otherwise powerful appeals for the preservation of the Union were almost invariably handicapped by the added protestation that in any event and however they might deplore the necessity they would, if need be, go with their State, against their own convictions of duty to the National Union.
Clay, whose imagination was fervid, advocated a vast system of canals and roads financed by national aid. But the doctrine of states-rights answered that the Federal Government had no power to enter a State, even to spend money on improvements, without the consent of that State. And, at all events, for Clay to espouse was for Jackson to oppose.
They came like midnight at noon upon the States-Rights men of the South, and a Virginian, wherever found, groaned as he read them. Mr.
Already Douglas showed a disposition to escape the toils of the slavery question by a laissez faire policy, which was compounded of indifference to the institution itself and of a strong attachment to states-rights.
Thus the really decisive debates which preceded the Civil War were not those which took place in Congress over states-rights, but rather the discussion in Illinois between Lincoln and Douglas as to whether slavery was a local or a national issue. The Congressional debates were on both sides merely a matter of legal special pleading for the purpose of justifying a preconceived decision.
After an arduous struggle the States-rights party succeeded; more than two-thirds of both branches of the Legislature favorable to a convention were elected; a convention was called the ordinance adopted.
After 1789, the old Egypt faction ceased to exist, except as grumblers; but the States-Rights men, though obliged to acquiesce in the Constitution, endeavored, by every means of "construction" their ingenuity could furnish, to weaken and restrict the exercise and the range of its power.
Word Of The Day