<P> In the mid-19th Century during the administrations of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant, the United States suffered a tragic passage through the Civil War and Reconstruction . An important survey of the philosophical and legal underpinnings of "States Rights" as held by secessionists and Lost Cause advocates afterwards is found in the speeches of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government . Davis defended secession by appealing to the "original principles" of the Founders' 1776 Revolutionary generation, and by expanding on William Blackstone's doctrine of legislative supremacy . By the elections of 1872, all states which had been admitted to the United States in accordance with the Constitution were fully represented in the U.S. Congress . </P> <P> Following the Supreme Court 1954 holding in Brown v. Board of Education, President Dwight D. Eisenhower used National Guard and U.S. paratroopers to enforce the rulings of the Federal Courts as they pertained to the Constitution . The "States Rights" doctrine was again appealed to during the mid-20th Century resistance to racial integration in the schools, notably in Arkansas' Little Rock Nine, Alabama's Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, and Virginia's Massive Resistance . Public schools in every state are now racially integrated by law under the authority of the U.S. Constitution . </P> <P> The tradition is seen in many shorter episodes of limited minority protest against the United States . During the War of 1812, Federalists conducted a Hartford Convention proposing New England secession during wartime to reopen trade with the declared enemy of the United States . It led to accusations of treason and the demise of the Federalist Party as a force in American politics . In 1921, the Maryland Attorney General sued to block woman suffrage . He argued in Leser v. Garnett that state legislatures were Constitutionally the sole determiners of who should vote in what federal or state elections, and that the 19th Amendment was improper . The Supreme Court's judicial review of the state court findings held that the 19th Amendment was Constitutional, and that it applied to the women's right to vote in every state . Women now vote in every state under the authority of the U.S. Constitution . </P> <P> One exceptional example of "states rights" persuading overwhelming majorities in a democratic and sustained way, and so transforming the nation came in the John Adams administration . Fear had spread that radical democratic sentiment might turn subversive as it had in the French Reign of Terror . But the Federalist - sponsored Alien and Sedition Acts meant to preempt the danger led to suppression of opposition press . The political reaction in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions sparked public opposition against the Federalist policy and led to twenty - four years of Constitutionally elected Democratic - Republican Party rule through six administrations of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe . </P>

In order to win ratification of the united states constitution