Gary Gallagher: evaluation

Transcript context

…What about the topic of states’ rights? At, at the very least- I love state rights. State rights… I mean, I love the way people use it with the Civil War. They associate it solely with Southern states- … of course. State rights is always available in United States history for somebody who’s not happy with what the federal government is doing. During the War of 1812, it was New England that most often talked- … about resorting to state rights. They had a convention where they sort of wandered over towards secession territory in the Hartford Convention. We think of it as state rights because as you lead up to the Civil War, you hear white Southerners talking about it all the time. “We need our state rights.” I always love to ask people who say that, “What are all the state rights? Give me– List the state rights that the white South is concerned.” You know, “Give me the top three. No, really, just give me the top two.” There’s only one. The state right that they’re worried about is the right of their state to interpose its power between a federal government that might try to interfere with slavery and a state government that wants to maintain it. That’s the state right that matters then. Northern states also resorted to state rights during this, the ramp-up to the Civil War, with what were called personal liberty laws. They tried to interpose their state power in between a federal government that would use its power to force escaped, enslaved people back into slavery. It’s whoever’s unhappy with the federal government, the concept of state rights is available, and both sides used it. And of course, the beautiful, dark, ironic hypocrisy was illustrated by the Confederacy when they were the first to pass a national draft in American history.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.