There’s an old adage that says history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. As the past few years have shown, Democrats aren’t too keen on history, especially American history. In fact, they hate American history so much that they probably don’t realize they’re repeating it.
In their rebellion against Trump’s constitutional purview and mandate to enforce immigration laws, Democrats have resorted to using almost the exact same talking points that southern leaders used leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War.
In the midst of increasing attacks on federal law enforcement in lawless blue cities like Portland and Chicago, President Donald Trump ordered the deployment of National Guard troops to protect ICE agents who are upholding immigration law.
And seemingly overnight, Democrats became champions of states’ rights and the 10th Amendment in a cynical ploy to paint themselves as victims of federal oppression. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker deemed it an “invasion” and called upon Texas Governor Greg Abbott to ignore Trump’s deployment of Texan National Guard troops to restore order. At a press conference, he warned Texas troops to “stay the hell out of Illinois.”
“We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion,” Pritzker said in a post on X. “It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.”
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson took it a step further, signing an executive order on Monday that established an “ICE Free Zone,” prohibiting federal immigration agents from using city property in the execution of their duties. “We will not tolerate ICE agents violating our residents’ constitutional rights nor will we allow the federal government to disregard our local authority.”
Sens. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Alex Padilla, D-Calif., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif. issued a joint statement accusing Trump of sliding toward “authoritarianism” and trampling on the rights of “sovereign states.”
“Donald Trump is stretching the limits of Presidential authority far past their breaking point and moving us closer to authoritarianism with each dangerous and unacceptable escalation of his campaign to force federal troops into American communities against the wishes of sovereign states in the Union he is supposed to represent,” the statement said.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said that the president had no business calling up National Guard troops — that is the purview of state governors. “What President Trump is trying to do is an abuse of power. And it is a threat to our democracy. Governors should be in command of their National Guards, our citizens soldiers who sign up to stand up in an emergency to deal with real problems,” she told PBS. ” Local law enforcement across the country knows how to manage for these types of demonstrations. Let them do their job and leave our troops at home.”
Even professional runner-up Hillary Clinton has become a champion of the 10th Amendment, responding to Pritzker’s statement with, “If ‘states’ rights’ mean anything, they must include the right to not get invaded by another state in peacetime. Americans everywhere: Speak up and stand against Trump’s outrageous assaults on Illinois and Oregon.”
That’s right, the same people who made it their personal crusade to tear down or deface every reference to the Confederacy in this country are now parroting the same talking points as secessionists.
Democrats used the battle cry of states’ rights constantly in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 to justify secession. Southerners argued that Lincoln would use coercion to plant the seeds of an anti-slavery regime in the South. In his February 1861 inaugural address, Confederate President Jefferson Davis summed up the southern argument for states’ rights:
When, in the judgment of the sovereign States now composing this Confederacy, it had been perverted from the purposes for which it was ordained, and had ceased to answer the ends for which it was established, a peaceful appeal to the ballot-box declared that so far as they were concerned, the government created by that compact should cease to exist. In this they merely asserted a right which the Declaration of Independence of 1776 had defined to be inalienable; of the time and occasion for its exercise, they, as sovereigns, were the final judges, each for itself.
William Rives, who had served as a senator from Virginia in the antebellum period, claimed that Lincoln aimed to rule through force and that secession would restore the southern states’ rights.
“Our justification now,” for secession, is “in the principles of the Declaration of Independence,” Rives said, in that the southern states had the right to resist a “government, which no longer stands upon the only legitimate foundation, the consent of the governed, but seeks to rule by the sword.”
But the problem with the South’s championing of states’ rights is that up until the election of 1860, the South had more often than not advocated for the power of the federal government to intervene on the slavery issue. In 1836, the House of Representatives passed the Gag Rule, which forbade legislators from even discussing slavery as part of official House business, and any petitions against slavery were immediately tabled without discussion. This caused outrage amongst the abolitionists, who argued that their First Amendment rights were being curtailed. As part of the Compromise of 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which required officials and citizens of free states to cooperate in the return of escaped slaves to their masters.
With measures like the Gag Rule and the Fugitive Slave Act, the southern states attempted to use the power of the federal government to impose their pro-slavery position on the entire country. In response, northern states protested that their own states’ rights were being infringed upon.
Likewise, Democrats during the Biden years denounced attempts by states, most notably Texas, to enforce immigration law, arguing that it was the sole purview of the federal government. The Biden administration successfully paused a 2023 Texas law which would allow local and state police to arrest suspected illegal aliens. A federal appeals court ruled the law unconstitutional in July.
“For nearly 150 years, the Supreme Court has recognized that the power to control immigration — the entry, admission, and removal of aliens — is exclusively a federal power,” the ruling said, according to the Texas Tribune.
In January 2024, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration and allowed Border Patrol agents to cut razor wire installed by Texas authorities as part of the state’s crack down on illegal immigration, known as “Operation Lone Star.”
Like Democrats of today, southern secessionists framed any attempt by Lincoln to restore order or even secure federal forts and armories in the South as an invasion.
Then-Democrat Georgia Sen. (and later Confederate Secretary of State) Robert Toombs said in his farewell to the U.S. Senate: “[slavery] is our question … We will tell you when we choose to abolish this thing; it must be done at our direction, and according to our will.” If you seek to invade our soil “with the sword in one hand and the torch in another,” we will “meet you upon the border.”
In an address to the Confederate Congress on April 29, 1861, 17 days after Confederates fired on Fort Sumter and 14 days after Lincoln called for 75,000 military volunteers, Jefferson Davis explicitly referred to the move as a declaration of war and argued that the U.S. federal government had no jurisdiction in the South.
He issued the declaration of war against this Confederacy which has prompted me to convoke you. In this extraordinary production that high functionary affects total ignorance of the existence of an independent Government, which, possessing the entire and enthusiastic devotion of its people, is exercising its functions without question over seven sovereign States, over more than 5,000,000 of people, and over a territory whose area exceeds half a million of square miles. He terms sovereign States “combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law.” He calls for an army of 75,000 men to act as a posse comitatus in aid of the process of the courts of justice in States where no courts exist whose mandates and decrees are not cheerfully obeyed and respected by a willing people.
Democrats fear the presence of federal immigration officials in their states and cities because the president might be able to effectively execute the mandate that voters gave him in last November’s election. Similarly, southerners feared that Lincoln would appoint Republicans as post masters, customs officials, judges, and other federal positions throughout the South. Those Republicans would then agitate against slavery and begin building a Republican constituency in the South that would eventually undermine the slaveholders’ regime. So, secessionists determined that they needed their own government.
“The question now for the South to consider is this — under whose government will the slaves of the South be most quietly kept in subjection and order? … If we had a government of our own, the post office, all the avenues of intercourse, the police and the military would be under our exclusive control,” an article in the Charleston Mercury, a prominent newspaper owned by fiery secessionist Robert Rhett, argued.
It’s not that Democrats can’t maintain order in their states — one of their main arguments is that they indeed can — it’s that they won’t. They have no intention of arresting Antifa terrorists who disrupt ICE’s operations or cooperating with federal law enforcement. Democrats will cling to their notion of states’ rights — a state’s right to ignore federal law and recklessly endanger its own citizens — as long as they are out of power in the federal government. If they regain power in Washington, they will undoubtedly reverse course and continue to use the national government to persecute their political enemies.
It’s doubtful that Democrats are purposefully repeating the same talking points used by secessionists, but the fact that they are says quite a lot about where the Democrats stand as a political movement. They have stoked political radicalism for years, and it’s finally started to spill over into outright violence against conservatives and the duly appointed agents of a Republican government.
Southern leaders believed they had a compelling constitutional argument for secession. Davis even looked forward to his 1869 treason trial as a chance to argue for the legality of secession. No matter the constitutional merits of southern leaders’ arguments, the South ultimately chose to settle the question of secession by the sword rather than the pen or gavel when its troops fired on Fort Sumter. Any attempt by today’s Democrats to adjudicate the same issues would constitute an implicit appeal to the same means by which the question was previously, and irrevocably, settled: war between the states.
The talking points used by secessionists led to the bloodiest war in American history and devastated an entire region of the country. If Democrats continue down this road, they may take the next violent, radical step that their rhetorical forebears did in 1861.