Nation-state

“ To point you to the state of the various Departments of the Government and of all the great branches of the public service, civil and military, in order to speak of the intelligence and the integrity which pervades the whole, would be to indicate but imperfectly the administrative condition of the country and the beneficial effects of that on the general welfare. Nor would it suffice to say that the nation is actually at peace at home and abroad; that its industrial interests are prosperous ”

“ My idea is that we should be made one nation in every case concerning foreign affairs, and separate ones in whatever is merely domestic; that the Federal government should be organized into Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, as are the State governments, and some peaceable means of enforcement devised for the Federal head over the States. ”

“ The State and Its Sovereignty.—The various economic and social functions that are exercised by the people as a nation can be performed in an orderly and effective way only when the people are organized politically, and the nation has full powers of sovereignty. When the nation functions politically it is a state. States may be large like Russia, or small like Montenegro; they may have full sovereignty like Great Britain, or limited sovereignty like New York; the fact that they exercise political authority makes them states. ”

“ Under the benignant providence of Almighty God the representatives of the States and of the people are again brought together to deliberate for the public good. The gratitude of the nation to the Sovereign Arbiter of All Human Events should be commensurate with the boundless blessings which we enjoy.
Peace, plenty, and contentment reign throughout our borders, and our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world. ”

“ A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability. ”

“ Before my term has ended, we shall have to test anew whether a nation organized and governed such as ours can endure. The outcome is by no means certain. ”

“ We have undertaken a new order of things; yet we progress to it under the framework and in the spirit and intent of the American Constitution. We have proceeded throughout the Nation a measurable distance on the road toward this new order. ”

“ Let the sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest we shall manage for ourselves. ”

“ The powers of the general government relate to external objects, and are but few. But the powers in the states relate to those great objects which immediately concern the prosperity of the people. Let us observe, also, that the powers in the general government are those which will be exercised mostly in time of war, while those of the state governments will be exercised in time of peace. ”

“ While under our constitution and form of government the great mass of local matters is controlled by local authorities, the United States, in their relation to foreign countries and their subjects or citizens, are one nation, invested with powers which belong to independent nations, the exercise of which can be invoked for the maintenance of its absolute independence and security throughout its entire territory. ”

“ I view the states as made for the people, as well as by them, and not the people as made for the states; the people, therefore, have a right, whilst enjoying the undeniable powers of society, to form either a general government, or state governments, in what manner they please, or to accommodate them to one another, and by this means preserve them all. ”

“ The recognition of any State by other States, and its admission into the general society of nations, may depend, or may be made to depend, at the will of those other States, upon its internal constitution or form of government, or the choice it may make of its rulers. ”

“ The Federal and state governments are parts of one system, alike necessary for the common prosperity, peace and security, and ought to be regarded alike with a cordial, habitual and immovable attachment. ”

“ By what means was the government, which was now, as all admitted, a mere federal league between sovereign States, to become, in any just sense, national? The idea of a nation implies the existence of a people united in their political rights, and possessed of the same political interests. ”

“ To establish the condition of things essential to the recognition of this fact there must be a people occupying a known territory, united under some known and defined form of government, acknowledged by those subject thereto, in which the functions of government are administered by usual methods, competent to mete out justice to citizens and strangers, to afford remedies for public and for private wrongs, and able to assume the correlative international obligations and capable of performing the corresponding international duties resulting from its acquisition of the rights of sovereignty. ”

“ Believe me Sir, it is no small task to bring to a conclusion the great objects of a United Government viewed in different points by thirteen Independent Sovereignties; United America must have one general Interest to be a Nation, at the same time preserving the particular Interest of the Individual States. ”

“ In regard to other matters, which may generally be described as national, the nation is supreme. It is plain that to maintain the line between these two sovereignties operating in the same territory and upon the same citizens is a matter of no little difficulty and delicacy. ”

“ Under the complex American system of government, in which the Federal Union and the several States each claim sovereignty and independent action within certain limitations, it became the theory and practice that towards each other the several States occupied the attitude of foreign nations, which relation was governed by international law, and that the principle of comity alone controlled the recognition and enforcement by any State of the law of any other State. ”

“ And the government of the United States being federal, and instituted by a number of sovereign states for the better security of their rights, and advancement of their interests, they may be considered as so many pillars to support it, and by the exercise of the state governments, peace and good order may be preserved in the places most remote from the seat of the federal government, as well as at the centre. ”

“ Exalt the citizen. As the State is the unit of government, he is the unit of the State. Teach him that his home is his castle, and his sovereignty rests beneath his hat. Make him self-respecting, self-reliant and responsible. ”

“ A spirit of strict deference to the sovereign rights and dignity of every State, rather than a disposition to subordinate the States into a provincial relation to the central authority, should characterize all our exercise of the respective powers temporarily vested in us as a sacred trust from the generous confidence of our constituents. ”

“ Independent states stretched over an immense territory, and known only by common difficulty, clinging to their Union as the rock of their safety, deciding by frank comparison of their relative condition, to rear on that rock, under the guidance of reason, a common government through whose commanding protection, liberty and order, with their long train of blessings, should be safe to themselves and the sure inheritance of their posterity. ”

“ We declared ourselves a nation by a joint, not by several acts; and when the terms of our confederation were reduced to form, it was in that of a solemn league of several states, by which they agreed, that they would collectively form one nation, for the purpose of conducting some certain domestic concerns, and all foreign relations. ”

“ Whether they are technically in the Union or out of the Union, it is the national duty to deal with these States in such manner as will most surely exalt the lower and middle classes of their inhabitants. The nation must teach them a knowledge of their own rights, while it also teaches them respect for its rights and the rights of man as man. ”

“ He did more than any other public man of the time to lessen the force of State attachments, to create a national feeling, and to lead the public mind to a comprehension of the necessity for an efficient national sovereignty. ”

“ America has chosen to be, in many respects, and to many purposes, a nation; and for all these purposes, her government is complete; to all these objects, it is competent. The people have declared that, in the exercise of all powers given for these objects, it is supreme. It can, then, in effecting these objects, legitimately control all individuals or governments within the American territory. ”

“ Our policy is wisely to govern ourselves, and thereby to set such an example of national justice, prosperity, and true glory as shall teach to all nations the blessings of self-government and the unparalleled enterprise and success of a free people. ”

“ The national government administers those public affairs which concern the whole people, such as the regulation of commerce, the granting of patents, and the coinage of money; and also those which pertain to the United States as a nation dealing with other nations, such as declaring war and making treaties of peace. ”

“ What nation presents such a spectacle as ours, of a confederated government, so complicated, so full of checks and balances, over such a vast extent of territory, with so many varied interests, and yet moving so harmoniously! ”

“ I congratulate you that you have come here to the nation's capital to discuss and consider subjects which are properly of national concern; that you have not come to ask the national government to do anything which you ought to do yourselves at home in your separate states, but to consider the exercise of the great commerce power of the nation, the power which from the beginning of our government has been fittingly placed in the hands of the national administration. ”

“ A great Republic, composed of different States, whose interest in all respects could not be perfectly compatible, then came deliberately forward, discarded one system of government and adopted another, without the loss of one man's blood. ”

“ When we remember the remarkable manner, entirely novel in the history of political science, in which our Constitution creates a new nation and its supreme national government and yet keeps alive the former independent nations and their federation, the next sentence of that letter is of absorbing interest. ”

“ We are now approaching the period when the American people began to perceive that something more was necessary to their safety and happiness than the formation of State governments;—when they found, or were about to find, that some digested system of national government was essential to the great objects for which they were contending; and that, for the formation of such a government, other arrangements than the varying instructions of different [115] colonies or states to a body of delegates were indispensable. ”

“ And then look at this Republic, stronger than any nation in Europe in the number, intelligence, vigor and patriotism of its people, and in the unparalleled abundance of its barely broached resources; resting with full security in its magnificent domain ”

“ In short, the real federal aspect of the nation, if we penetrate beneath constitutional forms to the deeper currents of social, economic and political life, will be found to lie in the relation of sections and nation, rather than in the relation of States and nation. ”

“ We have seen how they, the citizens of America, the possessors of the supreme will in America, then ended the complete independence of each of the thirteen nations but reserved to the citizens of each nation much of their former ability to exercise their own national powers of government over themselves, through their own delegation of such power to their only attorney in fact for such purpose, their own legislature. ”

“ Our birthright, the wise anticipation of those who framed our Government, our national and constitutional organization, which has repeated itself in all the States of the Union, this wholesome and just division of power between the three great independent, co-ordinate branches of the Government—the executive, the legislative, and the judicial—has already demonstrated that what seems to the nations of Europe to be a complicated and jangling system produces in fact the most perfect harmony, and the most complete and satisfactory organization for social order and for national strength. ”

“ With freedom and concert of action, it has enabled us to contend successfully on the battlefield against foreign foes, has elevated the feeble colonies into powerful States, and has raised our industrial productions and our commerce which transports them to the level of the richest and the greatest nations of Europe. And the admirable adaptation of our political institutions to their objects, combining local self-government with aggregate strength, has established the practicability of a government like ours to cover a continent with confederate states. ”

“ Article 2 Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independent, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.
Article 3 The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare; binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever. ”