States'+Rights

=The States' Rights=

toc States' rights is a doctrine that has been an issue since the founding of our nation. This is a doctrine where the states have all of the power and the Federal Government does not have the right to take these powers away. The States' Rights doctrine did a lot to protect the states from governmental tyranny and allowed a lot more freedom to those people in the states.

In The Beginning
Ever since the creation of our country the states' rights doctrine has been a problem. At the Constitutional Convention back in 1786 there were some people who did not want the Constitution to be ratified just because they did not want a federal government. These people were worried they might lose some of their rights such as owning slaves since some of the main members were upset about it. Fortunately everyone ratified the Constitution. If they hadn't done that this country may not be what it is today.

The Main Problems

 * The Tenth Amendment**

The Tenth Amendment was created to bolster the states' rights. In the Constitution the Tenth Amendment said, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This means that any rights that the Constitution didn't cover throughout the first nine amendments are also covered. The reason that this amendment was added was because some people were afraid that the federal government would run straight through the states if something else was not done about this.

John Calhoun
Some people were major supporters or defenders of the states' rights doctrine. John Calhoun is definitely one of these people. Calhoun said that if anything issued by the federal government was opposite of the states' rights or interests, the states' could completely ignore it. Now of course if this was something nowadays we would have now central form of authority and every state would be as if they were their own country.

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were created by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison sometime in the very early 1800s. These //resolutions// said that the rights to freedom of speech and press didn't say that there were no limits to these. The main problem for this was that it didn't say whether or not the federal government could limit them. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson had quarrels about this. They realize the the first amendment restricted these powers from the federal government. The only people who could do anything about it were the state legislatures.

The States' Rights created many conflicts and would have caused very severe problems to our country if something hadn't been done about them. Fortunately nowadays we are having less problems with this doctrine, but there are still some issues being raised about whether or not a federal government would be good. The people of the states have plenty of rights and most people are happy with what they have, but still they would have rather had our country with divided states instead.

**>States' Rights - Further Readings **
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States' Rights "Powers Reserved To The States"