States lost all rights when they accepted a federal income tax. The federal government can now bribe the states into doing whatever they want by threatening to withhold federal funding, the money they took from the state in the first place. That's how they got all states to raise the drinking age to 21. The path back is for the states to say no to federal income tax.

A state was supposed to call its own shots and to supercede the Fed in almost all regards. The problem is not too little Unity but too much.

1860, though the groundwork for civil war was laid starting in the 1830s.