Principles and Issues of the American Struggle [pp. 410-432]

THE AMERICAN STRUGGLE.
Atlantic or Western." It is remarkable, however, that hle made
no mention whatever of the question of the reserved rights of the
States, but devoted all his eloquence and energy to the single
point of maintaining the Union, unless the paragraph which
warned all functionaries to confine themselves within their re spective constitutional spheres can be construed to point in this
direction. "The spirit of encroachment," he said, "tends to
consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to
create, whatever the forin of government may be, a real despo tism." Jefferson, the third President, was particularly emphatic
on this point; and in his Inaugural Address, on the 4th of MJNarch,
1801, declared'"that the support of the State Governments in
all their rights, as the most competent administrators of domestic
affairs, was the surest bulwark against anti-republican tenden cies." In his first Annual Message, on the 8th of December, he
defined his understanding of the "Union" in words whose meaning none could mistake: " When we consider that this Government [the Federal Government, of which he was the Executive]
is charged with the external and mutual relations only of the
States, that the States themselves have principal care of our persons, our property, and our reputations [constituting, as these
do, the great field of human concerns], we may well doubt
whether our organization is not too complicated, too exlelsive,
and whether offices and officers have not been created uinnecessarily and sometimes injuriously to the service they were meant
to promote." Thus it appears that even in that early day the
chief magistrate was of opinion that centralization had been carried too far, and that the true safety of the Republic was to be
found in the minimisation of the Federal power, and the jealous
exercise by the several commonwealths of the rights and powers
they had solemnly reserved to themselves. Nor was this only
the Southern view of the subject. Massachusetts herself asserted
in the preamble of her separate State constitution, that " the people ofthis commoytwealth have the sole and exclusive right of govetnis,g themselves as a FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATE,
and do, and for ever hereafter shall exercise and enjoy every
power, jurisdiction, and right which is not, or may not hereafter
be, by them expressly delegated to the United States of America in
Congress assembled." Happy would it have been for all parties
if this understanding had been universal, if Washington had
given it his high support, and more especially if the Northern
States, with Massachusetts at their head, had always remembered
their own teaching, and, through good and evil fortune, jealously
acted upon the principle that so large a union could only be
maintained in Republican freedom by the localization of the
powers of Government. But this was not to be. The founders
of the Republic and the people of their day went wrong from the
beginning. They started upon a treacherous basis, inasmuch as
the contracting parties had opposite designs as to the results of
VOL. III.-NOS. IV & V.
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