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Lincoln NEVER believed in State rights to do anything at all unless it was only done inside an individual State and the USSC court case cited above merely echoed what Lincoln destroyed a nation for, a massive central State:

“[O]ur permanent part; ... the land we inhabit; ... our national homestead ... demands union, and abhors separation,” Lincoln argued. “In fact, it would, ere long, force reunion, however much of blood and treasure the separation might have cost.”

Lincoln’s concept of nationality demolished the underpinnings of state-sovereignty constitutional theory. Quite simply, “[T]he Union is older than any of the States.” The states did not create the Union; an American people created both states and Union, and the states never had any existence outside that Union. Thus, “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people”—not the states—”who inhabit it.” They might alter its government through amendment or revolution, but whether creating the Union or destroying it, it was they, not the states, who were its constituent elements. To Lincoln, it was not the southern states but individual southerners who were in rebellion, and he could ask the question, “By what principle ... is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation?”

“[T]he Union is older than any of the States.” The states did not create the Union; an American people created both states and Union, and the states never had any existence outside that Union. Thus, “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people”—not the states—”who inhabit it.”

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0010.103?rgn=main;view=fulltext