States' Rights, in the history of the United States, refers to a construction of the Constitution and to a doctrine based on that construction, to the effect that the several states of the Union were and are independent sovereigns, federate to attain and maintain certain common interests by means definite and limited, and that to them alone allegiance is due by their citizens; that the general government is not raised by the Constitution to the position of a national sovereign, but is merely a diplomatic agency whose acts must be ratified by the independent states from whom its authority is derived; and that these are each entitled to judge of any infractions of the Constitution, and to nullify any acts of congress which they may hold to be in excess of its authority, or even to secede from the Union. It will be evident that this position rests on a false assumption, for not one of the thirteen colonies which first formed the United States ever possessed an independent sovereignty, nor could sovereignty have been attained by them otherwise than by united action; so that in 1776 it was a single possessor of the entire sum of sovereign powers that came into being in the person of thirteen states manifesting the will and force to hold such power as one national state within all the territory known as the United States; nay, each several state jurisdiction is actually dependent on that federal will and force, and the sovereign powers exercised in the government of each state, as well as those exercised in and for the whole country by congress, are derived from the will and force of all the states, existing as one integral sovereignty. See Dr J. C. Hurd's Union-State (New York, 1890).
Invalid as the doctrine appears, however, it has played a prominent part in the country's history, and brought on finally the war of secession. Its earliest appearance was during the troubled years that followed the French Revolution, when the unsettled condition of affairs in that country alarmed congress and led it to pass certain Alien and Sedition laws, authorising the president to remove from the United States aliens whose presence might seem to him of public danger, and to punish sedition and seditious publications. This action of congress appeared to some to overstep its powers, and in 1798 the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia protested vigorously on States'-Right grounds; but the other states dissented from the position thus for the first time formally assumed. In 1811, and again in 1819, the question was raised in connection with the United States Bank Charter, Henry Clay, and afterwards the state of Maryland, maintaining that congress had no power to incorporate companies or to create a bank. So far the advocates of States' Rights had spoken only; in 1832, in South Carolina, they made the first attempt to carry the principle into action (see NULLIFICATION); in 1860-61 (South Carolina again the first), and in the years which followed, the seceding states carried out that principle, of which they assumed the truth, to the full. The war of secession was the logical outcome of the disputes and agitation of sixty years; with its failure it may be presumed that the doctrine which inspired it, at least in its extreme form and as a factor in practical politics, fell too.