Pick a controversial social issue. Imagine now that the response to such an issue is to turn it over to the individual states to resolve in their own way.
It sounds like the modern neo-con strategy for dealing with topics like abortion and gay rights. The argument put forward would be that it’s more equitable to allow states to decide these issues than to have a decision rendered at the federal level.
In fact, this has been tried before. The year was 1854 and the subject was slavery. Far from creating an uneasy peace it proved to be the match that ignited the Civil War.
The legislation in question was officially called An Act to Organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas and was promoted by Stephen A. Douglas, who was usually remembered today as an individual who came out second best in the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
Douglas, like Lincoln, called Illinois his home. He engineered the Act in a misguided effort to remove a threat to the union. History has proven that Douglas had a tin ear when it came to listening to public sentiment on slavery.
Douglas’ actions fought to overturn the Missouri Compromise of 1820 – a piece of legislation near and dear to the hearts of abolitionist. In fact, foes of the Kansas Nebraska Act wound up winning both houses of the Illinois legislature.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 forbad the introduction of slavery north of the parallel of 36 degrees and 30 minutes.
The problems began in March 1855 when thousands of Missourians crossed into Kansas to elect a pro-slavery territorial legislature. The election was widely seen as illegal. (Presidential races of 2000 and 2004, anyone?) When Douglas County Sherriff Samuel Jones, a pro-slavery man, was shot by an unknown assailant the county’s Grand Jury returned sedition indictments against the free-soil governor, two newspapers and Free State Hotel of Lawrence, Kansas. Sheriff Jones took over a posse which had invaded the town. The posse looted the town, wrecked newspaper presses, set fire to the governor’s home and burned the hotel.
The so-called Sack of Lawrence, Kansas was blown up into an even larger event by pro-slavery newspapers. The accounts helped motivate John Brown, an abolitionist who would later launch an attack in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. Others Kansans’ responses were mixed. Pro-slavery forces were ready for revenge, while abolitionists were horrified.
When Robert A. Walker arrived in Kansas in the spring of 1857 he was the target pro-slavery anger.
"And do you come here to rule us? You a miserable pigmy like you?...Walker, we have unmade governors before; and by God, I tell you, Sir, we can unmake them again," one of his host said. A subsequent pro-slavery constitutional convention decided not to allow voters an up or down choice on slavery. Instead voters were given the choice between the constitution with slavery and one without slavery.
But a clause in the anti-slavery constitution still grandfathered in slavery holders rights. Slave holders were allowed to keep not only their slaves but also the offspring of said slaves. One Kansan put it this way: It was a choice between taking arsenic with bread and butter or taking it straight.
By 1860 the Democratic Party was so divided that Douglas found himself the candidate of anti-slavery. Southern states choose John C. Breckenridge to oppose him.
The Democrats’ disarray led to Lincoln’s election.
There is a moral to this story. Some issues may be so contentious that the people they affect most directly cannot view them objectively. And a crazy quilt of laws governing a moral issue stir more anger and antipathy than they could ever breed harmony and peace.
Who wants to wait until today’s hot-button social issues reach this sorry state?