“… I believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people … are the safeguard to the continuance of a free government … whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.” ― General Robert E. Lee
“Federal interference in state functions can never be justified as a permanent continuing policy… Where once the Government engages in such an enterprise, it is almost impossible to terminate its connection therewith.” — President Calvin Coolidge 1925
“The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the state governments, in times of peace and security.” — President James Madison
To the early American, his state government was at least on a par with the federal government in his esteem. There is a perfect example in Frank Chodorov’s book, The Income Tax: Root of All Evil.
“President Washington was about to arrive at Boston on a visit, and Governor Hancock was perturbed over a matter of protocol; would he be compromising the dignity of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts if he went to meet the “father of his country” on arrival, or would it be more proper that the President call at the state Capitol? The Governor finally settled the problem by pleading illness…. The sequel to that incident is worth noting. President Washington was asked to review the Massachusetts militia; he refused on the ground that the militia was the military arm of the state, not the federal government; after all, the tacit understanding in those days was that the militia might be called upon to face the federal army.”
Florida Eliminates School Vax Requirements
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo move to become the first in the United States to drop all childhood vaccine requirements for school attendance. The proposal, framed as “medical freedom,” could make Florida the first state to remove school vaccine mandates, with legislative action planned for early 2026.
Critics have warned of the plan’s potentially deadly public health consequences.
The move would scrap all required vaccine mandates for children, including those required for school attendance, such as polio, diphtheria, rubeola, rubella, pertussis, mumps and tetanus.
The state’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, a longtime vaccine skeptic, compared school vaccine mandates to slavery, calling them “immoral” intrusions on parents’ rights. He stated that the Florida Department of Health would work with the legislature to repeal the statutes, aiming for removal by last January 2026. “Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body? I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God,” he said.
This move does not mean vaccines are eliminated for children. Parents who decide to vaccinate their children prior to entering school are free to do so. DeSantis and Ladapo are simply removing the state mandates and returning to parents the decision as to what, if any, vaccinations are given to their children.
Here is a chart of the injections given to a newborn up to one year. These injections don’t include the ones the state requires to enter public schools.
Federal Court Blocks Gov. DeSantis
A March 2026 federal court ruling has temporarily blocked attempts to alter national vaccine policies, creating a roadblock for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ efforts to end mandatory vaccinations for school children.
U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Boston, a Biden appointee, halted changes to childhood vaccine schedules, limiting the administration’s ability to reduce mandated shots. Judge Murphy ruled that the administration likely violated federal procedures regarding vaccine advisory committees, blocking efforts to cut recommended childhood vaccines.
The Trump administration has said it will appeal the March 16 decision. But for DeSantis, the strike against the federal government’s effort to retrench on vaccine requirements is another blow against his own call for ending mandatory vaccines for school children.
Organizations like the American Medical Association (AMA) have strongly opposed the potential rollback of school vaccine mandates, citing risks of infectious disease outbreaks. Collier County Florida had an outbreak of 132 cases of measles.
As a child, I had measles one week and chicken pox the next. I still recall the baking soda baths and Calamine lotion. We all went through those childhood diseases and even had parties so everyone would catch them and it would soon be over. Today the government freaks out if a number of children get any common childhood illness.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is also against any changes to the childhood vaccine schedule. They have filed a 90-page lawsuit against the HHS and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They want the court to reverse the recent changes to the childhood vax schedule and not because the AAP cares one whit about the health of America’s children, but because they are locked in a battle to protect their own profits.
Always “follow the money.”
Federal and State Powers
States can pass their own laws under the Tenth Amendment, which reserves powers not delegated to the federal government for the states. Under the Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2), federal law takes precedence when it conflicts with state law.
According to James Madison, the Father of our Constitution, the Constitution maintains the sovereignty of states by enumerating very few express powers to the federal government, while “those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
The U.S. Constitution creates a federal government with limited, enumerated powers primarily listed in Article I, Section 8, intended to prevent excessive central authority. Key powers include taxing, borrowing money, regulating interstate/foreign commerce, coining money, establishing post offices, and declaring war. These are distinct from state powers.
But that very same Section 8 also includes the so-called “Elastic Clause.” It authorizes Congress to write and pass any laws that are “necessary and proper” to carry out its enumerated powers. These “implied powers” have been used by Congress to create a national bank, to collect a federal income tax, to institute the draft, to pass gun control laws and to set a federal minimum wage, among others.
While founders like Jefferson argued for a strict interpretation, Hamilton’s broader view—that the government must have the means to execute its duties—prevailed, establishing implied powers as lawful.
Jefferson was right.
Unfortunately, these powers have weakened and even destroyed many of our unalienable rights listed in the first Ten Amendments of our U.S. Constitution.
The Constitution grants almost all other power and authority to the individual states, as Madison said. While the Constitution doesn’t explicitly list the powers retained by the states, the founders included a catch-all in the 10th Amendment, ratified in 1791: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The Judiciary
Alexander Hamilton portrayed the judiciary as the “least dangerous” branch of government. In Federalist No. 78 he starkly contrasts the courts’ significant influence in contemporary American politics. He argued that, unlike the executive and legislative branches, the judiciary lacks “the power of the sword and the purse,” implying that it neither enforces laws nor controls resources. The judiciary’s role was interpretative, ensuring that laws conformed to the Constitution.
While Hamilton’s assertion aimed to alleviate fears of judicial overreach, many contemporary constitutional issues suggest that the judiciary now wields significantly more influence than the Founding Fathers may have allotted.
The judiciary nonsense of telling any state that they cannot make their own laws is totally unconstitutional. The Roe decision was overturned. Abortion is not one of the government’s enumerated powers and thus belongs to the states alone. The same goes for gay marriage, 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges, and slander and libel,1964 NYTs v. Sullivan. All belong only to the states, as they are not listed in the enumerated powers of the federal government, whether the justices believed they were or not.
The One Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) had a proposed 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation from President Trump. It was voted down, 99-1. It’s back. A December 2025 Executive Order seeks to block states from enforcing their own rules, which the administration claims hinder innovation. Once again, AI is not part of the enumerated powers, despite the desire to drop it into the “commerce clause.”
States have rights equal to the federal government.
The federal government cannot directly mandate that all states require vaccinations for school entry, as this authority resides only with the individual states under their 10th Amendment “police powers”. The feds can “influence policy” through CDC recommendations, funding incentives, and even during declared public health emergencies.
The Powerful Federal Boot
Obviously, the feds overstepped their bounds with Covid. The masking, six-feet distancing, school closings, shuttering small businesses and people, not to mention mandating “operation warp speed” injections, all were federal control on steroids marked by fear from totalitarian entities within the federal government.
Hospital protocols were opposite of what has always been prescribed for sufferers of respiratory infections. The mounting deaths from hospital protocols exacerbated the public’s terror.
Our Founding Fathers tried to protect the states.
In Graham’s “A Constitutional History of Secession,” he writes:
“In launching their new Union in 1789, the Founding Fathers of the United States renewed and strengthened their confederacy of free, sovereign, and independent States. And in adapting the principle of the Glorious Revolution to their own situation, they reserved a constitutional right of the people in each of the several States to elect a convention of delegates in extraordinary circumstances, which, notwithstanding all other forms of law, could abolish and reform their governments under the protection of the Union, or, if circumstances warranted, could withdraw or secede from the Union, and assume their place among the nations of the earth.
“This primordial and universal right did not suddenly appear, but evolved over the course of centuries by operation of natural law made manifest in legal tradition. While it can be misrepresented and obscured, it can never be finally extinguished by propaganda and must inevitably return in human experience.”
Peaceable and lawful revolution, belongs to Americans, and to any nation, and is a true form of seeking liberty and freedom which will be tried again and again when life becomes too encumbered and overbearing as totalitarian evil is foisted on the people of the nation.
The Unnecessary Wars
The evil of human bondage is not new. The 430-year account of the slavery of the Jewish people (Israelites) in ancient Egypt is a central narrative in the Hebrew Bible, primarily detailed in the Book of Exodus.
The horror of enslaving any human being because of their skin color or ethnic origin was on its way out of America before Lincoln’s election in 1860. Thousands of African blacks were sold into slavery by conquering black tribes. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 in the British Empire had long affected the American conscience. Cries from politicians, the American people, churches and synagogues had yielded the impetus to eliminate human bondage.
Less known in America is white slavery. British, Irish and Scottish street urchins were sold into slavery until the 1920s, the children barely lasted a year. Others were from women’s prisons. The book, White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America, tells part of the story. In They Were White and They Were Slaves, Michael Hoffman II writes how millions of Slavic, English, and Irish men, women, and children were also enslaved,.
Diaries of both Northern and Southern soldiers asked why the issue of slavery was brought into the war. It is absolutely juvenile to believe that so large and complicated an historical event as the federal government’s massively destructive and revolutionary neo-Marxist invasion and assault of America’s South was strictly about benevolence.
It was about one thing; the war was about money. The intent of the ruling elements of the North was to keep their profitable control of Southern land and people. When both sides’ leaders made their plans and went into battle, neither were thinking about slaves. The dispute was over money and self-determination. The South wanted a more limited federal government and lower tariffs—the ideals of Thomas Jefferson—when the South could not get that, they opted for independence.
The Southern states had a written guarantee that they could secede. The Constitution is silent on secession; however, the 10th Amendment clarifies states’ rights. This is why President James Buchanan, Lincoln’s predecessor in the White House, had allowed the first seven Southern states to leave in peace. The idea that “states’ rights” superseded federal law was promoted by South Carolinian John C. Calhoun, vice president in Andrew Jackson’s first term as president, one of the most experienced and powerful politicians in the country at the time.
It was the International Workingmen’s Association who wrote a letter to President Lincoln in 1864. The letter stated, “If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.” It was signed by men of the association including Karl Marx. Their main objective was the elimination of private property.
The war had nothing to do with slavery or Lincoln would have freed northern slaves as he did southern slaves. The underground railroad went to Canada, not the northern states as slaves would have been captured and returned. The truth was known by any middle school child at the time. The real cause of the war was a dispute over money. Lincoln’s goal was to keep the Union intact, with or without slavery which he stated in his 1862 letter to Horace Greeley.
States were assured when they signed onto the Union that they could secede should they become unhappy with the Union. Even New York State considered secession.
The vast majority of Southern whites did not own slaves, with only about 4.8% of them owning one or more in 1860. That same year, the widow C. Richards, and her son P.C. Richards, were the largest black slave owners in Louisiana, owning 152 enslaved people on their sugar cane plantation.
In 1860, William Ellison was South Carolina’s largest free black slave owner. He was born a slave, but was manumitted at age 26. By 1860, he owned one of the largest cotton gin manufacturing companies in the South, owned 900 acres of land, and 63 slaves. He was also said to have made money by breeding and selling slaves.
In “Dixie’s Censored Subject Black Slaveowners,” by Robert M. Grooms, he writes, “According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slaveholding states. Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689 lived in New Orleans. The country’s leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city.”
Slavery was not just an evil white institution.
Real numbers are estimated at between 4.2% to 7.6% of the South owned one or more slaves.
Because of Lincoln’s War, over 700,000 American lives were eliminated, 80,000 of them non-combatants, young and old, both black and white slaughtered via order of General Grant by William Tecumseh Sherman. It is estimated that the number of war dead is short by at least 13%. Sherman went on to slaughter the Buffalo, the mainstay of Native Americans’ diets. Genocide of the Native Americans resulted. Sherman called it, “the final solution.”
Government, A Necessary Evil
Thomas Paine’s perspective that “government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil” was widely shared by our Founders.
Mary Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee, attempted to pay the taxes on their Arlington, Virginia, estate in 1863. Unable to pay in person due to the Civil War, she sent her cousin, Philip R. Fendall, to Alexandria to pay the $92.07 tax. Under an 1862 law for collecting taxes in “insurrectionary” districts, payment had to be made by the landowner in person. Thus, federal authorities rejected the payment because it was not made by the owner in person.
Due to the refusal of the payment, the federal government seized the estate and sold it at a tax sale on January 11, 1864, for $26,800 to the United States, and then used it as a cemetery which it remains today, Arlington National Cemetery.
In 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled it unconstitutional and gave the land back to Lee. He then sold it to the federal government for $150,000 as there were already 17,000 to 20,000 graves on his land.
The property was originally a plantation owned by George Washington Parke Curtis, who dedicated his mansion (Arlington House, now managed by the National Park Service) as a memorial to his step-grandfather, George Washington.
Ten years prior to the war, Lee had inherited 10 to 12 slaves. Mary Custis Lee aimed to equip enslaved individuals, particularly women, with literacy and practical skills to ensure they could be independent upon being freed. She did this knowing full well it was against the law at that time.
While Mary Lee was an advocate for eventual emancipation, she did not immediately free them. She and her husband, Robert E. Lee, oversaw the transition of these enslaved people on a roughly 5-year plan of release.
Robert E. Lee was a Virginian. He went to war to support his state’s right to secede.
The War Between the States cost more American lives than WWII. It was a watershed event that destroyed much of what our founders granted to the states when they joined the Union.
Conclusion
Key conflicts between states and the centralized federal government have involved federal mandates, commerce clause expansion, and regulatory agency actions which states often challenge in court as violations of sovereignty.
They are right to do so.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas often views federalism as a “structural safeguard for individual liberty,” prioritizing the reserved powers of states over federal intervention.
Conservatives thank the Lord for Justice Thomas’ 1991 appointment to the high court.
©2026 Kelleigh Nelson. All rights reserved.
