History of the United States I / Unit 15 USH1 2135 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Mobilised Against Its Own Principles
The idea
A nation founded on states' rights built the more centralised of the two wartime governments. It conscripted men before the Union did, impressed enslaved people over their owners' objections, ran industry directly, suspended habeas corpus, and overruled states that tried to evade its draft. States' rights advocates resented Davis's conscription, taxation and requisitions. Governors withheld supplies and troops. Vice President Alexander Stephens opposed conscription, the seizure of enslaved property, and the suspension of habeas corpus, which put the Confederacy's second officer in opposition to its central war measures.
In practice
The government of the states' rights side doing more of everything its own doctrine forbade than the government it had seceded from.
Where people slip
This is the strongest entry in the course on the changing role of government, and the reason is that it is not hypocrisy. A war of survival requires central power, and any government fighting one will take it. What the Confederate case demonstrates is that constitutional doctrine loses to necessity when the two collide, which is the same lesson Unit 14 entry 1973 taught about states' rights in eighteen fifty. The doctrine was never the driver.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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