State (United States)

“ 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. ”

“ Whatever belongs to the power of Congress and the jurisdiction of the courts of the Union, they may confidently be relied upon to provide and perform; and to the legislatures, the courts, and the executive authorities of the several States I earnestly appeal to secure, by adequate, appropriate, and seasonable means, Within their borders, these common and uniform rights of a united people which loves liberty, abhors oppression, and reveres justice. ”

“ The Federal Government is, as the term imports, a confederation of States, and the People of each State have transferred to the United States, such a portion of their power as is, in the Constitution specified, to be exercised by Congress, and have reserved the Remainder to the States, to be exercised by their respective Legislatures ... ”

“ Recurring to these principles, which constitute the organic basis of union, we perceive that vast as are the functions and the duties of the Federal Government, vested in or intrusted to its three great departments--the legislative, executive, and judicial--yet the substantive power, the popular force, and the large capacities for social and material development exist in the respective States, which, all being of themselves well-constituted republics, as they preceded so they alone are capable of maintaining and perpetuating the American Union. ”

“ Each state is sovereign and independent to a certain degree, and the states have a right, and they will regulate their own internal affairs as to themselves appears proper; and shall we refuse to eat, or to drink, or to be united, with those who do not think, or act, just as we do? ”

“ There are now twenty-four states in the Union, and each has, in its sovereign capacity, a right to decide for itself in the last resort, what is the true construction of the constitution; what are its powers; and what are the obligations founded on it. We may, then, have, in the free exercise of that right, twenty-four honest, but different expositions of every power in that constitution, and of every obligation involved in it. What one state may deny, another may assert; what one may assert at one time, it may deny at another time. ”

“ That each State in the Union shall respectively retain every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not, by the constitution, delegated to the Congress of the United States, or to the departments of the federal government. ”

“ Each of the states has grown in power, in vigour of operation, in commanding influence, in wealth, revenue, population, commerce, agriculture, and general efficiency. No man will venture to affirm, that their power, relative to that of the Union, has been diminished, although our population has, in the intermediate period, passed from three to more than twelve millions. No man will pretend to say, that the affection for the state governments has been sensibly diminished by the operations of the general government. ”

“ The impracticability of one consolidated Government for this great and growing nation will be more apparent and will be universally admitted. Incapable of exercising local authority except for general purposes, the General Government will no longer be dreaded. In those cases of a local nature and for all the great purposes for which it was instituted its authority will be cherished. Each Government will acquire new force and a greater freedom of action within its proper sphere. ”

“ The government of the United States is denominated a "Federal Republic." Each state has a constitution for the management of its own internal affairs; and, by the federal constitution, they are all formed into one united body. ”

“ By extending our Government on the principles of our Constitution over the vast territory within our limits, on the Lakes and the Mississippi and its numerous streams, new life and vigor are infused into every part of our system. By increasing the number of the States the confidence of the State governments in their own security is increased and their jealousy of the National Government proportionally diminished. ”

“ The three constitutional amendments which conferred freedom and equality of civil and political rights upon the colored people of the South were adopted by the concurrent action of the great body of good citizens who maintained the authority of the National Government and the integrity and perpetuity of the Union at such a cost of treasure and life, as a wise and necessary embodiment in the organic law of the just results of the war. ”

“ How is it possible, for a moment, to reconcile the notion, that each state is the supreme judge for itself of the construction of the constitution, with the very first resolution of the convention, which formed the constitution: "Resolved, &c. that a national government ought to be established, consisting of a supreme, legislative, judiciary, and executive?" ”

“ Is it the creature of the state legislatures, or the creature of the people? If the government of the United States be the agent of the state governments, then they may control it, provided they can agree in the manner of controlling it; if it be the agent of the people, then the people alone can control it, restrain it, modify, or reform it. ”

“ But after all has been done by the passage of laws, either Federal or State, to relieve a situation full of solicitude, much more remains to be accomplished by the reinstatement and cultivation of a true American sentiment which recognizes the equality of American citizenship. ”

“ Our commerce, our wealth, and the extent of our territories have increased in corresponding proportions, and the number of independent communities associated in our Federal Union has since that time nearly doubled. The legislative representation of the States and people in the two Houses of Congress has grown with the growth of their constituent bodies. ”

“ It is evident that a confederation so vast and so varied, both in numbers and in territorial extent, in habits and in interests, could only be kept in national cohesion by the strictest fidelity to the principles of the Constitution as understood by those who have adhered to the most restricted construction of the powers granted by the people and the States. ”

“ A state constitution is then in a just and appropriate sense, not only a law, but a supreme law, for the government of the whole people, within the range of the powers actually contemplated, and the rights secured by it. ”

“ Where states are connected or united through a justiciary medium, whether that justiciary medium is a person, a body corporate, or a state, all the states are free states, their relationships being governed by law. Where states are connected through an executive medium, whether that executive medium is a person, a body corporate, or a state, all the states are free and independent states, and each acts according to its will. ”

“ In discussing constitutional questions, then, we lay down these axioms:—That in relation to the territories, the powers of Congress are supreme and exclusive; that in relation to the States, they are specifically defined and limited by the constitution—and that we have no right to exercise, within the limits of a State, any power as resulting from the general rights of sovereignty; because that sovereignty belongs to the States and to the people, and not to the Federal Government. ”

“ 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. ”