The Union—North and South—Slave Trade and Territorial Questions—Disunion—Southern Confederacy [pp. 561-572]

THE UNION-NORTH AND SOUTH.
powers and duties, and so long as no sovereign State violated the terms
and spirit of the compact and no longer, the Union could remain a perfect one. The interests of the Northern and Southern States were always distinct and different, though not necessarily clashing, while the
general government was fairly administered. The Northern States
were always a carrying (and since become manufacturing) section,
while the Southern were always, and are still, purely agricultural;
and hence, wherever the general government transcended the limits
of its rights and powers, its administration must inevitably act unequally, and thereby destroy the perfection of the Union, with the
equality of benefit intended to be derived by all. In the compact,
as said before, each State delegated an exactly equal quantum of
rights and powers. These rights and powers were simply delegated,
never surrendered, and hence subject to resumption whenever the
exigencies of the State demanded, either in the failure of the consideration or in its final accomplishment. Absolute ultimate sovereignty, to some extent dormant, but still existing, of necessity remained in each and every State. Occasion for its exercise might
never arise; but when it did arise, to it, and to it alone, was the last
appeal. As long as a State continued in the Union, a voluntary
party to the compact, just so long that State was subject to its provisions and the regulations made in accordance with it, as the supreme law of the land. By the common consent of the high contractiing( parties. the States, as expressed in the very terms of the
compact, the constitutionality or legitimacy of the laws and regulations, made by the general government, were referred to the federal
judiciary, as the supreme tribunal of the Union. A resort or appeal beyond this tribunal must necessarily amount to a vitiation of
the compact, and abandoment of the Union. If any State violated
the provisions of the compact, or refused obedience to the laws of
the general government, pronounced constitutional by the proper
tribunal, it results from the essential nature of all contracts that,
from that moment, ipso facto, the State ceased to be a party to the
compact, and forfeited all claim to the benefits accruing to the Union;
and the other States were at liberty to continue the compact of
union without the violating party, or to take the whole as vitiated
in its violation by one, resuming each, its delegated rights and powers.
Of necessity, there can be no punishment, or recovery of damages, for
State violation of the compact or constitution, for by the very act
the State passes from under its jurisdiction, and that of the govern ment created by it, and is, in itself, ultimately sovereign. The dif ference between the government intended to be inaugurated, and that
of the old Confederation, was not really of a fundamental nature,
but consisted principally in the extent of rights and powers, delegated
by the States and in the permanence of the object in view-that of
of the Confederation being special and temporary. Such we think
to be the true theory of our Union, and so it was considered during
the earlier half -of its existence. If such be not the true theory,
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