The particular news here is probably a minor data point in Missouri politics. Blunt signed "a 1990 letter that discusses 'states’ rights' as a cause of the Civil War, but makes no mention of slavery." He was Missouri's Secretary of State at the time. In response to the Star's questions, Blunt admitted he signed it but claimed he didn't read it and that "it’s always been clear to him that slavery was the 'original sin' of the Constitution."
Several paragraphs into the article, Wise gives us more details on the letter which was in response to a student's letter. And it provides a good example of how Lost Cause pseudohistory about the Civil War is part of a larger narrative, based on white supremacist assumptions:
“Why did the States feel that their rights caused them to separate from the U.S.?” the student asked Blunt. “What does the Constitution say about states rights? How have states’ rights changed since the Civil War?”In this example as presented by the Kansas City Star, we see the emphasis on "state rights" as the central cause of the Civil War without mentioning slavery, which is a key argument of the Lost Cause/neo-Confederate narrative. And we see how the letter connects that narrative to Republicans' opposition to "racial desegregation in Kansas City and St. Louis schools" at the time.
The typewritten response was signed by Blunt and printed under Missouri Secretary of State letterhead. It says the debate over states rights was at the heart of the Civil War. ...
His response to the student, which runs slightly over one page, single-spaced, does not mention slavery.
It suggests the student read the writings of former Vice President and U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, “one of the most articulate and ardent supporters of the states’ rights position” and suggests studying the lives of Edmund Ruffin and Jefferson Davis “on the states’ rights side” and Republican President Abraham Lincoln, his Democratic rival Stephen Douglas and Nathaniel Lyon, a Union general, on the “national rights side.”
Calhoun called slavery a positive good. Davis, also a defender of slavery, was the president of the Confederacy. Ruffin was a Virginia slaveholder who claimed credit for firing one of the first shots of the war. He ended up killing himself, wrapped in the Confederate flag.
The letter signed by Blunt concludes with the observation that the states’ rights debate “continues to be waged in our own lifetimes.” It cites, as an example, the “debate whether or not the federal government has the right to require the state of Missouri to pay the costs of racial desegregation in Kansas City and St. Louis schools.” [my emphasis]
I've done several posts this year about John Calhoun, the guiding spirit of today's American white nationalists. As he was for the secessionists of 1861.
The Nullification Crisis of 1831-2 was a conflict that was explicitly though not overtly about slavery. In this case, Calhoun defended a "states rights" position and President Andrew Jackson's position asserting federal authority won out. The Congressional lineup around that issue was broadly sectionally divided, with slave states tending to support the states-rights stance and the free states supported the national position.
The notorious Indian Removal Act of 1830 also lined up sectionally, even more clearly than on the Nullification Crisis. The Southerners favored the Act, which extended federal power in controlling territories in the area in question. The Northern opponents used the states-rights argument to oppose the Act. So even then, Southern support for "states' rights" was based on the issue immediately at stake, not on some abstract, legalistic commitment to states' rights as a basic Constitutional principle.
Between the Nullification Crisis and Lincoln's election in 1860, the controversies over slavery had the Southern slaveowners backing the use of national power in favor of slavery and against states' rights. After 1840, the Presidents were increasingly favorable to the slave states. The Fugitive Slave laws were a big point of contention during that whole period; Southern representatives demanded more use of federal power to force free states to return escaped slaves.
After the 1860 Presidential election, slave states did begin to invoke states' rights again. But as their secession ordinances and speeches of secession leaders made very clear, the purpose their secession and treason was defending slavery.
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