Sic Semper Tyrannis? The American Federal-state Debate: 1815-1865
by By 1865 federal power, economic, military, and political, was markedly greater than it had been in 1815. Although during much of the antebellum period the drive towards federal power was slow at best and experienced serious setbacks, events leading up to the Civil War fueled the polarization of American politics and society, with concepts of federal power and states’ rights becoming inexorably entangled in the nation’s fate.
President Jefferson Davis’ central authority over the states of the Confederacy was at least comparable to President Abraham Lincoln’s power over the remaining Union states. In addition, the Confederate Constitution gave Davis the power to veto specific portions of bills, enhancing the president’s power to manipulate whatever items were on his agenda.
Davis’ federal power over Southern states is evident in his successful imposition of universal conscription, transcending state borders, as early as April of 1862.
North Carolinian governor Zebulon Vance was one of many prominent Southerners who argued that Davis’ power over states was too great. The fact that, even in the heart of the Confederacy, states’ rights were compromised during the Civil War is remarkable; it leads us to question whether there was any real concept of states’ rights left to defend.
If states’ rights were in hot water due to Jefferson Davis and the Confederate Constitution, they were positively boiled by Abraham Lincoln and the Union forces during the Civil War. By far the most devastating and internally upsetting conflict in American history, the war shifted military and political power incontestably to the North. Just as the South was seen as a repository for states’ rights, the North was intricately bound to arguments for federal power; Northern troops were even called “Federals”.
The decisive shift of power to the North, thus, was virtually synonymous with a shift towards federal dominance. The largest standing army in the world emerged victorious over the vanquished proponents of Southern states’ rights. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 had legally freed all slaves in Confederate states, and by the end of the war nearly all of America was free of slavery, the states’ right held most dear in the South. In 1865, federal authority looked to be assured, and states’ rights advocates faced their most desperate hour.
On April 14th, 1865, a short number of days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s formal surrender, President Lincoln was assassinated. After firing his shot, the assassin reportedly shouted the Virginia state motto, “Sic Semper Tyrannis” (“Thus always to tyrants”). It was a futile gesture. The damage to states had already been done, and no assassination could change this. As this man’s cry suggests, states’ rights were not dead in the public mind, but federal power had won a decisive victory; never again would the Union be threatened by secession.
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