American change from political disputes (1820€“1860). In the early nineteenth century, Americans sought to resolve their political disputes through...

Most
modern scholarship suggests that Southerners did not chafe at the use of federal power, but that
it would no longer be used to further their agenda. They had no problem in using federal power
to force slavery on the territories in violation of popular sovereignty (as they did with the
so-called Lecompton Constitution in Kansas), in subjecting Congress to "gag rules"
concerning the debate over slavery, and indeed enforcing fugitive slave legislation in violation
of local personal liberty laws in the North. The idea that "states rights" were
actually an issue is more related to Lost Cause ideology than modern historical work. For a good
synthesis of the recent historiography of the political crises of mid-century, see William
Freehling's Road to Disunion or Allan Tulloch's History of the
Civil War Era.