Prologue

It was like watching blood dry.

The ink settled into the paper, which appeared rough now that he stared at the page so intently.  Governor Bredesen wasn't the first to see a bill like this get through his state's congress, though his Tennessee congress was one of few to do so unanimously.   Bredesen, however, was the first governor to sign a State Sovereignty Resolution, and as commander of a state militia, his became the first state to offer teeth to the cause - Teeth for the Tenth as it were.  The Volunteer State once sent troops for a cause not its own during the Napoleonic war of 1812, and it ended up helping a crazed dictator.  One should not repeat sending Tennessee's sons to die for such a cause.  

Only fifteen years ago, 47 states saw bills pass through their houses to push for state sovereignty.  The Oklahoma bombing kicked off a call for greater security at the federal level, and a media war declared on state militias.  Finding such criticism (and federal power grabs) distasteful, conservative state representatives and senators began drawing lines in the sand to birth the Tenther movement.  Fast forwarding past the 9/11 attacks, the resulting creation of the Dept of Homeland Security, and into a broken record chapter of war in the Middle East, 7 states have rallied behind the need to assert their sovereignty within the United States.  In a few days, Alaska's governor would join Bredesen in offering the fullest commitment possible by a state to this assertion.  

The other states stayed the course to consider the resolution, with only 3 decidedly against the idea.  The spread of support and descent for the bill was pretty surprising.  One might expect the Red States to sign and the Blue ones not, yet it was California who led the Tenther way in 1994.  Bredesen himself was a Democrat in a GOP state.   Conversely, it was surprising to see the Granite State to be one of the first to reject the movement given it's "Live Free Or Die" slogan backed up by its top-dog standing as most free state in the union.  Montana was also among the first to decline to participate in the movement.

No state knew what the stakes were when pushing the single-page bill through its lower houses to the upper houses.  It was simply a resolution to fire a warning shot across the bow of an over-reaching federal government.  It was not a threat of cessation, and in most states, it was only a legislative paper bullet.  But Bredesen packed a steel ball atop the congressional wadding, his mere signature implying the state troops may be summoned for defense.  

In a couple years, nine more states would join the 3 Naysayers, and 5 more states would join the 7, including the original Naysayer who would rather live free than die.