"S" is for States' Rights

"S" is for States' Rights. The doctrine of states’ rights, a recurring theme of South Carolina political thought, is composed of two elements: a belief that the U.S. Constitution is a compact formed by the states that retained their sovereign status; and a belief that powers not specifically granted by the Constitution to the national government remain in state hands. During the sectional controversies before the Civil War, John C. Calhoun contended that states could nullify federal laws that exceeded the constitutional powers granted to the national government. States' rights were an inspiration for the birth of the Confederacy and a bane of its existence. In 1948, states’ rights advocates created the short-lived Dixiecrat party. In 1956, southern Congressmen issued the “Southern Manifesto” denouncing what they saw as the U.S. Supreme Court’s usurpation of states’ rights.