Jefferson and Nullification by Clyde Wilson

Jefferson and Nullification by Clyde Wilson:

"In a later generation, another minority president seemingly destroyed forever the constitutional role of the States by declaring the open, democratic, deliberative acts of fourteen States to be only 'combinations' of criminals who refused to obey him.

Lincoln made that stick by a brutal war of conquest that did not 'preserve the Union' but changed the Union into a central state with no limits to its power. Those who hope to revive a constitutional role for the States as counters to the present U.S. Empire, must hope to make the States once more into self-conscious, viable polities who have the political will to enact nullification and stand by it."