Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 113

The debate over slavery was the overriding political issue in the days leading up to the Civil War, and states’ rights came to be used as a justification to maintain it. Andrew Jackson’s vice president, John C. Calhoun, an outspoken proponent of states’ rights, proposed that states should be able to invalidate federal laws that they believed to be unconstitutional through the process of nullification.

Matthew Whitaker, who served as the acting attorney general in the Trump administration after Jeff Sessions resigned, was among those who had earlier advocated a controversial proposal to use the now-discredited doctrine of nullification to invalidate the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

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nullification The concept that states can invalidate federal laws that they believe to be unconstitutional.

In contrast with Calhoun, President Jackson—sympathetic to states’ rights but convinced that nullification would destroy the Union—rejected the idea of nullification. Undeterred, Calhoun continued to advocate his nullification doctrine. As a result, South Carolina issued a formal Ordinance of Nullification in 1832.²⁴ Jackson’s continued opposition to nullification led Calhoun to resign as his vice president the next month. Congress went on to pass legislation that authorized the use of military force against states that refused to enforce federal law.²⁵ Advocates of nullification lost the battle, but the seeds of Southern discontent had been sown.

In the decades that followed, slavery further inflamed relations between the national government and the Southern states. The election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 proved to be the last straw. He had made it clear in the campaign that he supported efforts at the national level to prohibit slavery. Building on the concept of nullification and the ideas of coequal sovereignty inherent in dual federalism, Southern states now claimed the right of secession, the ability to withdraw from the Union. South Carolina formally exercised that right on December 20, 1860, and eleven others quickly followed suit. Together, the states that seceded formed the Confederate States of America.

The defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War seemed to establish once and for all that states cannot secede, a view endorsed by the Supreme Court in Texas v. White (1869).²⁶ Nonetheless, fringe movements at both ends of the political spectrum continue to embrace the idea of secession. Today, the Texas Nationalist Movement calls for the secession of Texas.²⁷ As of 2009, it claimed that more than 250,000 Texans had signed up in support of that goal.²⁸ Vermont’s secessionist party, called the Second Vermont Republic,²⁹ ran a slate of nine candidates in statewide elections in 2010. If you think such candidates never win, look to Alaska. There a candidate representing the Alaska Independence Party,³⁰ Walter Joseph Hickel, drew enough support to be elected governor in 1990. That party’s 2006 attempt to place an initiative on the ballot calling for Alaska to secede from the United States was blocked by a ruling of the Alaska Supreme Court, which held that any attempt at secession violated the U.S. Constitution.³¹

The modern Texas Nationalist Movement depicts the federal government as an oppressive force and calls for the secession of Texas.

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