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Yes because the state not always makes the best decisions for the nation altogether.
Read the Constitution, Jared, read the Constitution!
Say, guys, before you put up something for debate . . . PLEASE research it first!
There is such a thing as "States Rights", aka the 10th Amendment.
This is what the Civil War was really about, and the south lost (and with it states' rights). Too bad too.
Pssst! Read the tenth amendment!
FYI – The Civil war was started by a bunch of nitwits who had no idea what they were getting into.
However, the secessions from the Union was all about the Southern States wanting to continue importing, breeding, keeping and selling/trading human beings as slaves. (that was their economy – slave labor)
Individual states running their own war effort is why the South lost – no cohesion/monetary support for a "national" military. In other words, an impotent and powerless central government.
The Civil war was fought and won/lost well over a hundred years ago.
Uh… there is also something in there called the supremacy clause (which preceded the 10th amendment). So states may make and enforce their own laws, so long as they do not violate the federal US constitution. In which case they should be overruled as unconstitutional.
Most cases where a federal law exists and would be supreme over state laws, and where there is no US constitutional challenge for state law we may find that it is the federal law which should be overruled as unconstitutional, but in theory, the federal law is supposed to come first. In practice, good luck enforcing it if the state doesn't want to (see Civil Rights Era).
10th amendment goes quite far (and much farther than it currently does, mostly because of the abuse of the commerce clause and federal funds for state programs), but it's not an absolute right. So the answer is more complicated than a straight no.
That's not a very good reason.
The nation-state does not always make the best decisions for a) the nation altogether or b) the various and several states. In fact, one could argue it rarely does the former and far too often may do the latter (see corn and coal subsidies)
I'm not sure which to respond to first. Lincoln didn't free the slaves in slave states that fought with the north (In fact the emancipation proclamation didn't free anyone, but that's an aside). Believing that the civil war was about slavery is like believing that the crusades were about religion. That was just the line given to the masses, and the post war justification written into history by the winners. The civil war was all about the federalists vs the anti-federalist. If it had been about slavery then why would Maryland, Delaware, Missouri and Kentucky fight with the north?
If it wasn't about slavery than why did the (more numerous) seceding states write lengthy declarations to that effect? Indeed… when you ask… what states rights were to be violated? There aren't any other meaningful ones that were being violated or proposed to be. I sympathize with the notion of decentralized government, but you don't fight a war over it to defend the right to enslave human beings within that distributed government. And that's what the South was doing, even if the North didn't get right down to it for a couple years.
Delaware and Maryland had few slaves, relative to their southern brethren. Maryland they had a coup attempt in 1860 and a lot of Lincoln's habeas imprisonments were used for prominent political figures in Baltimore. They also ended up outlawing slavery in 1864 anyway.
Missouri… I don't think I would say "fought with the north". There was a brutal guerrilla campaign out that way and some of the first battles occurred there (the uprising in St Louis for instance).
Kentucky had issues with a divided state government (governor was a slaveholder, legislature was pro-union), but basically sided with the north because the south violated its neutrality position (the same position taken by Virginia and other middle states for several months). In essence, they were attacked first.
In addition, you're overlooking the secession of West Virginia from Virginia.
One solution Kentucky suggested prior to the war was to propose a 13th amendment guaranteeing slavery in slave states. I'd hardly say that's its a side issue as a result. It is the central issue. There are consequences that can be considered in the states versus federal government, but these are consequences and not intentions and rationales marshaling the sides to war.
Okay, this will require me to drive down to North Carolina (where I was born) scan some newspapers from the civil war era and post them online so that I can link to them as a source. This may take a while.
I've read newspapers from the civil war era (its a major reason I'm not worried about the "division" between the partisan split now, it was much worse then, people tend to overblow modern events and remove historical context). It's not that hard to find virtually all secessionist literature and documents online.
But it can be very hard to find anything which claims another cause for the war (as written and conceived at the time). I'd agree there…