From Charleston’s secessionists to Trump’s executive orders, the American right’s favorite slogan has always concealed the same thing: power without accountability.
From slavery to segregation to modern authoritarianism, “states’ rights” has been America’s most enduring con. This essay traces how power hides behind freedom’s language — and how history repeats when the people stop paying attention.
When South Carolina announced its divorce from the Union in December of 1860, it did so with a legal brief masquerading as scripture. The “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union” accused the Federal Government of violating the Constitution, trampling on state sovereignty, and showing scandalous disrespect for the “domestic institutions” of the South—by which they meant, of course, human slavery.
The document is a masterpiece of self-pitying grandeur. It portrays the enslavers as victims, their oppressors not the men who wielded the whip but those who dared to call the whip immoral. The Northern states, South Carolina thundered, had denounced slavery as “sinful,” refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, and even—horror of horrors—elected a president who found the practice distasteful. These, they claimed, were existential assaults on their liberty.
It was, in essence, a tantrum dressed up as a philosophy of law. Behind the ornamental talk of “states’ rights” lay one unambiguous demand: the untrammeled right to own, torture, and traffic in other human beings. It was the sort of moral inversion only America could produce—a rebellion for freedom in defense of bondage.
The Birth of a Convenient Myth
After the Civil War ended and the Confederacy’s flag was folded into a relic, the myth of “states’ rights” survived like a stubborn weed. It was resown during Reconstruction, revived to oppose desegregation, and cultivated in every era where the powerful found themselves inconvenienced by equality.
The term’s appeal lies in its moral camouflage. Who could object to the principle that local communities govern themselves? But the phrase’s history tells a different story: “states’ rights” has rarely been invoked to expand freedom—it has almost always been used to restrict it.
The Confederates claimed it as their moral shield; segregationists brandished it to resist integration; and today, a new generation of politicians utters it with the same polished insincerity. The rhetoric is constant: Washington must not dictate to the states. The reality, however, remains the same: those shouting loudest about freedom are often the ones most eager to deny it to others.
The Modern Confederacy in Red Hats
Fast-forward to 2025, and the ghost of the Confederacy has traded its gray uniform for a red tie. The Republican-led “Red States” that speak so piously about states’ rights now find themselves marching in lockstep with a central government more intrusive than any imagined by their forebears.
Donald Trump’s second act—call it Revenge of the Union Jackboot—has turned the conservative fantasy of decentralized governance into a grotesque parody. Far from defending state sovereignty, the Trump administration’s recent actions reveal an insatiable appetite for federal control.
Consider the new federal statute requiring all states to include medical debt on individual credit reports. The policy, sold as a measure of “transparency,” effectively sabotages millions of working-class Americans. It punishes illness with financial ruin, driving the poor deeper into precarity while leaving the wealthy unscathed. States that once sought to protect consumers from such cruelties now find their own laws preempted by Washington’s fiat.
If the antebellum South cried “states’ rights” to defend slavery, today’s right invokes it to defend predation—economic, environmental, and social.
Executive Overreach in the Name of Freedom
April 2025 will be remembered as the month the White House formally declared independence—from the Constitution. Three executive orders, issued in rapid succession, dismantled decades of precedent.
On April 8, Trump ordered the Attorney General to identify and halt enforcement of any state law that “burdens” domestic energy production—a euphemism for nullifying state climate initiatives. On April 22, he signed another decree preempting state equal-opportunity laws, reducing civil rights enforcement to the lowest national denominator. And on April 23, a final stroke of the presidential pen declared certain anti-discrimination protections unenforceable if they conflicted with “federal interpretation.”
One could hardly script a better satire of hypocrisy. The movement that once raged against “federal tyranny” now wields federal power like a cudgel. The states that once feared Washington’s shadow are now forced to kneel beneath it.
From Jefferson’s Republic to Trump’s Principality
Thomas Jefferson, that high priest of decentralized governance, once envisioned the United States as a constellation of small, self-governing republics. But the current right’s flirtation with authoritarian populism has inverted his ideal. What was meant to be a federation of equals is fast becoming a pyramid—with one man’s ego balanced precariously at the top.
In this new arrangement, “freedom” means the freedom of the powerful to do as they please. The small businessman is told that regulation is tyranny, while the multinational polluter is told it is liberty. The states are free only insofar as they obey.
And so the old Confederate argument has been repackaged for a new era. Where once it defended the plantation, now it defends the corporation. Where once it claimed divine sanction, now it claims populist rage. But its essence remains unchanged: a sanctimonious defense of privilege masquerading as principle.
The Republic in Reverse
It is tempting, perhaps, to dismiss all this as hypocrisy—politics as usual. But it is more than that. It is a moral regression. Each time “states’ rights” is invoked to justify cruelty or concentrate power, the nation slips a little further back toward its founding contradictions.
The Confederates at least had the courage of their nihilism: they seceded, fought, and lost. Their ideological descendants have discovered a more efficient method—rule from within, using the language of liberty to destroy its substance.
The United States, once defined by its experiment in self-government, now finds itself governed by executive order and corporate whim. The flag still flies, the Constitution still hangs in classrooms, and politicians still mouth the old oaths—but the spirit has curdled.
The rhetoric of “states’ rights” remains a mirage in the American desert: shimmering with the promise of freedom, concealing a thirst for domination.
In 1860, it was the right to enslave. In 1960, the right to segregate. In 2025, the right to exploit. The details change, but the melody persists—a hymn to hypocrisy in the key of power.
“States’ rights,” as history teaches us, has never been about rights at all. It has always been about control—control dressed up in the rhetoric of freedom, tyranny wrapped in the flag. And like all great American myths, it survives not because it is true, but because it flatters those who believe it.
Why It Matters
“States’ rights” has always been the camouflage of tyranny — invoked by those who fear equality and crave control. From Charleston’s slaveholders to today’s populist strongmen, the slogan serves one purpose: to make oppression sound like liberty. This essay reveals how that same moral fraud still drives America’s political machine — just under a different flag.
Key Takeaways
- “States’ rights” historically defended slavery, segregation, and exploitation.
- Modern conservatives use it to disguise federal overreach and corporate privilege.
- Trump’s executive orders inverted Jefferson’s vision of local autonomy.
- Freedom rhetoric is being weaponized to consolidate power.
- True liberty demands accountability, not slogans.
Further Reading (Bookshop.org)
- Democracy in Chains — Nancy MacLean. How the radical right re-engineered “states’ rights” to dismantle democracy. https://civilheresy.com/Democracy in Chains
- These Truths — Jill Lepore. A sweeping history of America’s moral contradictions from founding to fascism. https://civilheresy.com/These Truths
- The New Jim Crow — Michelle Alexander. A piercing study of how systemic control survived slavery and segregation in new forms. https://civilheresy.com/new jim crow
History repeats — rebellion resists.
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