Today, we live in a society not only polarized over race relations and the advent of a black President, over the rights of immigrants, over religious tolerance, over who and what is a legitimate American and whether they shall be accorded "birth-right citizenship" as enshrined in the first line of the Fourteenth Amendment. But we have a political culture riven by a near war over federalism — the ceaseless debate about the proper relation of federal to state power. Yes, the Civil War is rooted in states' rights. But the significance of any exercise of states' rights is always in the issue to which it is employed. And in 1860-61, "state sovereignty" was exercised by some Southerners as an act of revolution in the interest, as they said themselves over and over, of preserving a racial order and a system of slavery.
Today, states' rights doctrines are advanced by many governors and Republican-majority legislatures in the very language of "secession" and "nullification" made so infamous in antebellum America.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/04/12/2011-04-12_150_years_after_fort_sumter_forces_that_gave_rise_to_the_civil_war_still_plague_.html#ixzz1JT2z0T00
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