Chapter 1:
- True value of the Federal principle. -- historical examples. -- Coleridge's prophecy. -- Early mission of the American Union. -- how terminated. -- the American system of Government a mixed one. -- the Colonial period. -- first proposition of a General Congress. -- declaration of Independence. -- articles of Confederation. -- their occasion and origin. -- nature of the compact. -- peace-treaty of 1783. -- analysis of the nature and value of the Confederation. -- how it was terminated. -- the Convention of 1787. -- character of the men who composed it. -- political idolatry in America. -- parties in the Convention. -- the question of representation. -- the novelty of the American Constitution the result of an accident. -- State Rights. -- Amendments to the Constitution. -- nature of the American Union. -- not a consolidated nationality. -- the right of Secession. -- the Union not the proclamation of a new civil polity. -- not a political revolution. -- a convenience of the States, with no mission apart from the States. -- the two political schools of America. -- Consolidation and State Rights. -- how the slavery question was involved. -- a sharp antithesis. -- the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. -- Webster and Calhoun, the anti-types of Northern and Southern statesmanship. -- Mr. Calhoun's doctrines. -- “nullification” a Union-saving measure. -- its ingenuity and conservatism. -- Calhoun's profound statesmanship. -- injustice to his memory. -- how the South has been injured by false party names
There is nothing of political philosophy more plainly taught in history than the limited value of the Federal principle. It had been experimented upon in various ages of the world — in the Amphictyonic Council, in the Achaean league, in the United Provinces of Holland, in Mexico, in Central America, in Columbia, and in the Argentine republic; in all these instances the form of government established upon it had become extinct, or had passed into the alternative of consolidation or anarchy and disintegration. Indeed, it is plain enough that such a form of government is the resource only of small and weak communities; that it is essentially temporary in its nature; and that it has never been adopted by States which had approached a mature condition, and had passed the period of pupillage. It is not to be denied that the Federal principle is valuable in peculiar circumstances and for temporary ends. But it is essentially not
