American Government and Politics Today, Brief Edition, 2014-2015

56 PART ONE • THE AMERICAN SYSTEM

Anti­Federalist parties even before the Constitution was ratified. With the resort to arms,

Supreme Court rulings were, for a time, irrelevant.

The Shift Back to States’ Rights. As we have seen, while John Marshall was chief

justice of the Supreme Court, he did much to increase the power of the national govern­

ment and to reduce that of the states. During the Jacksonian era (1829–1837), however,

a shift back to states’ rights began. The question of the regulation of commerce became

one of the major issues in federal­state relations. When Congress passed a tariff in 1828,

the state of South Carolina unsuccessfully attempted to nullify the tariff (render it void),

claiming that in cases of conflict between a state and the national government, the state

should have the ultimate authority over its citizens.

During the next three decades, the North and the South became even more sharply

divided—especially over the slavery issue. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina formally

repealed its ratification of the Constitution and withdrew from the Union. On February 4,

1861, representatives from six southern states met at Montgomery, Alabama, to form a

new government called the Confederate States of America.

War and the growth of the National government. The ultimate defeat of the South

in 1865 permanently ended the idea that a state could successfully claim the right to

secede, or withdraw, from the Union. Ironically, the Civil War—brought about in large

part because of the South’s desire for increased states’ rights—resulted in the opposite: an

increase in the political power of the national government.

Thousands of new employees were hired to run the Union war effort and to deal with

the social and economic problems that had to be handled in the aftermath of the war. A

billion­dollar ($1.3 billion, which is about $19 billion in today’s dollars) national government

budget was passed for the first time in 1865 to cover the increased government expendi­

tures. The first (temporary) income tax was imposed on citizens to help pay for the war.

The Civil War Amendments. The expansion of the national government’s authority

during the Civil War was also reflected in the passage of the Civil War amendments to the

Constitution. Before the war, it was a bedrock constitutional principle that the national gov­

ernment should not interfere with slavery in the states. The Thirteenth Amendment, rati­

fied in 1865, did more than interfere with slavery—it abolished the institution altogether.

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, defined who was a citizen of each

state. It sought to guarantee equal rights under state law with this language:

[No] State [shall] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process

of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In time, the courts interpreted these words to mean that the national Bill of Rights applied

to state governments, a development that we will examine in Chapter 4. Finally, the Fifteenth

Amendment (1870) gave African Americans the right to vote in all elections, including state

elections—although a century would pass before that right was enforced in all states.

The Continuing Dispute over the Division of Power

Although the outcome of the Civil War firmly established the supremacy of the national

government and put to rest the idea that a state could secede from the Union, the war by

no means ended the debate over the division of powers between the national government

and the states.

Social Media

in Politics

The New York Times

sponsors a series on the

United States Civil War

that uses contemporary

accounts, diaries, and

images. To follow it on

Twitter, enter “nytcivilwar.”

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