Once the system the Founding Fathers created was destroyed in 1865 it was entirely foreseeable that the SCOTUS would be the final unelected arbiter of our rights. Once the states were removed as constitutional actors in their own right with the ability to check the excesses of the federal government, there was nothing left but 9 unelected federal government lawyers.
You could say, 1932, with FDR’s new deal monstrosities, but the states still had lots of power at least until FDR’s revolution in the Court.
Wow, how wrong is that. With the end of the Civil War secession became impossible. So the ultimate check against federal power and tyranny was lost (temporarily IMO).
"The question of treason is distinct from that of slavery; and is the same that it would have been, if free States, instead of slave States, had seceded. On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate the slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could thereby [be] induced to stay in the Union. The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals."
Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 May 14, 1887) Abolitionist
Once the states were entirely subjugated by the federal govt via passage of the 24th amendment and their ultimate check on federal overreach the right of unilateral secession was de facto stripped away from them, the door for ever more federal usurpations was wide open.