STATES' RIGHTS. A political term having reference to the rights of the individual States as compared with the central Government in coun tries having a federal form of government. In the history of the United States, the term is used to denote the view prevailing in the South prior to the Civil War with regard to the nature of the Union. According to this view the Union was a compact of sovereign and independent States; the central or Federal Government wax the mere agent of the States, which were re garded as the principals; and the primary alle giance of the individual was to his State rather than to the United States. In effect this view upheld the right of a State to interpose its am thority when the central Government enacted op pressive or unconstitutional laws. (See NULLI FICATION.I Southern statesmen and political leaders contended for this view with particular insistence in connection with the long controversy over slavery. Prior to the Civil War. a large
proportion of the people of the Southern States held to the States' rights view of the Constitu tion, although many of them were not nullifiers. In the early part of the nineteenth century, par ticularly at the time of the War of 1812, the States' rights view was also strong in the North and East, and was not abandoned until it be came the view and support of the slavery inter est. The Civil War settled the issue adversely t,, the States'-rights view, and it is no longer a constitutional question in the old sense of the term. In the German Empire, States' Rights, or Particularism, as the Germans call it, is very strong. and has been at the bottom of many great constitutional struggles in that country. The Imperial Constitution recognizes a large sphere of autonomy of the individual States, and some of those in South Germany enjoy rights which are survivals of the Confederation.