There was more than enough hypocrisy (and still is) on both sides of the "state's rights" issue. For example, prior to the Civil War, the Southern states were more than willing to use the powers of the federal government to force states that had outlawed slavery within their own borders to recognize the "rights" of slave owners who traveled to a Northern state accompanied by their slaves (i.e., the slaves would become freemen upon entering the Northern state, especially if the slave owner had freely agreed to allowing his or her slaves to enter that Northern state). If the Southern states really and truly believed in "state's rights", then they should have just told their citizens to avoid traveling to the Northern states accompanied by their slaves and that if they did so and as a consequence lost their slaves then they were on their own, and not to rely on the (big bad) federal government to come to their rescue (i.e., force one state to follow the laws of another state). What the Southern states really wanted, and often did, was to use the federal government to enforce their "right" to own other human beings by forcing those who viewed slavery as an abject, immoral evil to participate in this evil. So much for those who argue that the Civil War was really about "state's rights", and without slavery there would likely have been no war to begin with!