You won’t be surprised that Donald J. Trump doesn’t know the history of the “States’ Rights!” battle cry. After all, this is the president who thinks abolitionist Frederick Douglass is still alive. Douglass died more than a century ago in 1895.
The states’ rights cause is closely associated with the defeated Confederate South because the White former plantation owners who ran their antebellum South (and their descendants who control the South now) used it to keep Black people in their place. But enslavers were at one time big fans of Big Guv’mint, in the same way they’re embracing a strong federal government today.
Once upon a time, there was no greater fan of a strong federal government lording it over states than the slave states. That’s because they were fans of the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, which declared that free states couldn’t harbor escaped slaves and must return them to their owners, no matter what. The South was upset that, under the 1793 law, creative free states were requiring jury trials for the return of escaped slaves; lots of the juries, naturally, ruled in favor of the runaways.
The 1850 law was even more brutal, barring jury trials. The law also allowed fines and imprisonment for anyone aiding runaway slaves and creating a special federal police force to enforce the capture and return of slaves. (Any resemblance to current ICE practices may or may not be intentional.) Runaway slaves were returned to their plantation owners by Union troops even into the early days of the Civil War!
So how did the South turn on their beloved federal government? Easy! Because none of their arguments then — like none of their arguments now — were based on real Constitutional principles. The real question being asked was “How can I best keep exploiting enslaved people and their descendants?” Federal government? Or states rights?
The Confederate states resented the federal troops stationed there during Reconstruction, as they zealously put the kibosh on mob violence, voter intimidation, and otherwise depriving the newly freed slaves of their rights. The nerve! The same people who did not believe Wisconsin, Vermont, Michigan, or Massachusetts had states’ rights to protect runaway slaves just a few decades earlier, all of a sudden were very interested in states’ rights. Can’t imagine why.
Oh, wait! It’s easy to imagine, since the states’ rights battle cry, along with the criminal Compromise of 1877, allowed the South to basically replicate slavery through Jim Crow laws.
Now it’s time for another about-face. Just last year then-South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was foaming at the mouth at the prospect of federal troops heading to Republican-led states that wanted to break the law to sweep up undocumented immigrants, calling it “a direct attack on states’ rights.” As she told Fox News on Feb. 4, 2025, “If he (President Biden) is willing to do that, and to take away my authority as governor as commander-in-chief of those National Guard, boy, we do have a war on our hands.” Wow! Our girl was willing to relitigate the Civil War over this!
But now? Alas, ardent states’ rights defender Kristi Noem is no more. Noem, now Homeland Security director, is all about a strong, interventionist federal government. She cheers the federal takeover of various National Guard outfits to foment unrest in Blue States.
Sure, Noem is inconsistent on principles. But, like her bad-faith-arguing predecessors, the slaveholders, the real question isn’t about procedure or principle: It’s still, “How can I best oppress dark-skinned people?” She’s only a hypocrite if you take her bad-faith argument at face value.
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Ivonne Rovira
Ivonne Rovira
Ivonne Rovira
Ivonne Rovira
Ivonne Rovira
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