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Structure of the American Commonwealth.-Separatist Tendencies and Influerces. Consolidating Forces.-The Slavery Question; its Rise and Progress.-The Territories, and the Effect produced by the Controversy about them.-The Fugitive Slave Law.-The Tariff.

THE quick growth of the American Union, its loose political organization, and constant tendency to expansion, have throughout its short history given to it a character of extraordinary vigour, mixed with somewhat of fragility and infirmity. Composed in large measure of emigrants, and the children of emigrants, from various parts of Europe, without a common centre of legislation or the pervading control of a strong central Government, this great people, rapidly formed and still more rapidly increasing, seemed to want some of those securities for permanent cohesion and for the steady maintenance of national life on which older communities have been accustomed to rely. Its Constitution, which appeared to be neither national nor federal, but, as Madison said, a composition of both, was a novel experiment; and, though the work of some of the ablest and wisest men who ever lived, had originated in a compromise between conflicting interests, and was stamped with the character of a compromise. The general nature of the rights and obligations created by it had been a subject of dispute among American statesmen and jurists; and a settled difference of opinion, turning partly on the question of policy, whether it were good

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Chap. I.

or bad to strengthen the central authority, and draw tighter the ties which bound the States together, partly on the question of constitutional law, what was the actual stringency of those ties and measure of that authority, had always divided, and appeared likely to continue to divide, the mass of the American people. From the very first, it was said many years ago, "one great party has received the Constitution as a federative compact among the States, and the other not as such a compact, but as in the main national and popular." Six or seven times at least, on distinct occasions, between 1797 and 1840, it had been solemnly asserted to be federative, and not national, by the Legislatures of several States. Nor was this a mere theoretical question, which could never assume practical importance. The powers with which the Constitution invests the central Government of the Union were more august indeed, but to the private citizen less visible and palpable, less directly and intimately connected with his daily life, than those which were

1 For a precise expression of the former of these two views it has been usual to refer to the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, and the Virginia Resolutions of 1799, drawn respectively by Jefferson and Madison, and adopted by the Legislatures of those States. The first Kentucky Resolution was as follows:

"Resolved,―That the several States composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government, but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of Amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself the residuary mass of right to their own self-government, and that, whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and as an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party; that the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."

reserved to the Governments of the several States. The laws which secure to each man his life, liberty, and property, and regulate his social and family relations— these laws, though their ultimate guarantees might be sought in the aggregate force of the entire commonwealth, were in fact made and enforced by his State alone, and could not, without a breach of the Constitution, be made or enforced, altered or interfered with, by the authorities, legislative or executive, of the Union. His State, therefore, was to him the nearest and most sensible object of those feelings, and source of those benefits, which men commonly experience towards and receive from their country, and which are the real basis of the sentiment of patriotism and the moral duty of allegiance. The law itself under which he lived recognized this relation, for it placed allegiance to his State in its list of duties, and treason against the State in its catalogue of crimes.1 It was evident, then, that should a conflict

1 For example, the subjoined sections of the New York Codes as reported complete by the Commissioners (these Codes however, I believe, are not yet law) :—

"Political Code.-§ 3. The sovereignty of the State resides in the people thereof, and all writs and processes are issued in their name."

"§ 10. Allegiance is the obligation of fidelity and obedience which every citizen owes to the State."

"Penal Code.-§ 57. The following acts constitute treason against the people of this State :

or,

"1. Levying war against the people of this State within the State

"2. A combination of two or more persons by force to usurp the Government of this State, or to overturn the same, evidenced by a forcible attempt made within this State to accomplish such purpose; or,

"3. Adhering to the enemies of this State while separately engaged in war with a foreign enemy in the cases prescribed in the Constitution of the United States, and giving to such enemies aid and comfort in this State, or elsewhere."

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"§ 60. Every person convicted of treason shall suffer death for the

same."

Story (Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, § 1,301) suggests a doubt whether there can under the Constitution be a case of treason against a State, which is not at the same time treason

Chap. I.

Chap. I.

ever arise between the substantial interests, or the real or supposed rights, of a State or any number of States, and the rights and interests of the Union, there might arise also in the breasts of many Americans a conflict of sentiment, and a conflict, real or supposed, of public duties, such as could not possibly occur in any country differently constituted. The chances of such a contingency seemed to multiply as the number of States multiplied, as population increased at a rate which promises to raise it to a hundred millions before the end of the present century, and as the dominion of the Republic spread fast and far, colonising and peopling the shores of the Pacific, covering by degrees the greater part of an immense continent, and embracing new varieties of climate, race, and soil.

Are Americans then deficient in national feeling? On the contrary, there is no people in the world in whom it burns more strongly. Indeed, one of the things which we learn from the history of the United States is

against the United States, and, therefore, cognizable exclusively by the Federal Courts.

Mr. Seward (10th April, 1861) writes to Mr. Adams :

"One needs to be conversant with our federative system, as perhaps only American publicists can be, to understand how effectually, in the first instance, such a revolutionary movement must demoralize the General Government. We are not only a nation, but we are States also. All public officers, as well as all citizens, owe not only allegiance to the Union, but allegiance also to the States in which they reside."

"The people of each State," said the Supreme Court in The County of Lane v. the State of Oregon, " compose a State, having its own Government, and endowed with all the functions essential to a separate and independent existence."

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"Not only," said Chief Justice Chase in a recent case, can there be no loss of separate and independent autonomy to the States through their union under the Constitution, but it may not unreasonably be said that the preservation of the States, and the maintenance of their Governments, are as much within the care and design of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the National Government. The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States."—Texas v. White, Wallace's Reports in the Supreme Court, vol. vii, p. 560.

the rapidity with which this sentiment may rise in the hearts of men towards a newly-adopted country, which they believe to have given them prosperity, whose present and prospective greatness flatters their imaginations, and in whose political institutions they feel not only content but pride. The various influences which tend to produce throughout the States, and among men gathered from all countries, a certain uniformity of manners, habits, and modes of thought; the diffusion of education through schools of one general type; the commanding and levelling force of public opinion in a great democratic community; even the strong party spirit and imperious party organization,-I may add, in ordinary times, even those often-recurring elections to Congress and to the Presidential Chair which periodically agitate the country from end to end,-contribute to this result. The general government of the Union is by these made a matter of interest to every American, and of no languid interest. Every American has a voice, which he is constantly summoned to exert, in determining the hands in which that government shall be lodged; and the whole people are incessantly marshalled under flags which, if they have not always a very definite device, are at any rate not local or sectional. The restless, migratory character of the population, which rarely permits all the members of one family to remain denizens of any State, assists, as Mr. Motley has observed, to interlace the States with each other, and all with the Union. It may be added that the general tendency which exists in Europe towards the consolidation of small communities and the concentration of power, operates with all its force in America; where, if we look to the future, it has both its advantages and its dangers. The progress of mechanical skill and invention,

1 It appears from the Census Returns of 1860, that in the previous ten years one-fourth of the whole free native-born population had migrated from State to State.

Chap. I.

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