Selective "States  Rights"


Map of the Confederacy



In the period before the Civil War it was accepted that yes the US government with the states could indeed abolish slavery by constitutional amendment. That was why so many in the South were so afraid of the rising number of Free states that would, they feared, eventually reach a number that would allow the abolition of Slavery by constitutional amendment.1

In fact the original 13th amendment recognized this fact by the fact it was even proposed, and further efforts were made to make it impossible to amend by other constitutional amendments further recognizing that the abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment was recognized pre Civil War as a perfectly legal possibility.2