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Chapter 3:
From the foundation of the Federal Government down to 1830, both the North and the South held the Constitution to be a compact between the States.
one of the great difficulties in arguing the question of the relative power of the States and of the
Federal Government, consists in the fact that the present generation has grown up under the shadow of the great Federal monster, and has been blinded by its giant proportions.
They see around them all the paraphernalia and power of a great government— its splendid capital, its armies, its fleets, its
Chief Magistrate, its legislature, and its judiciary—and they find it difficult to realize the fact, that all this grandeur is not self-created, but the offspring of the States.
When our late troubles were culminating, men were heard frequently to exclaim, with plaintive energy, ‘What!
have we no government capable of preserving itself?
Is our Government a mere rope of sand, that may be destroyed at the will of the States?’
These men seemed to think that there was but one government to be preserved, and that that was the
Government of the
United States.
Less than a century had elapsed since the adoption of the
Constitution, and the generation now on the theatre of events had seemingly forgotten, that the magnificent structure, which they contemplated with so much admiration, was but a creature of the States; that it had been made by them for their convenience, and necessarily held the tenure of its life at sufferance.
They lost sight of the fact that the
State governments, who were the creators of the
Federal Government, were the governments to be preserved, if there should be any antagonism between them and the
Federal Government; and that their services, as well as
