JAMES JACKSON KILPATRICK

THE
SOVEREIGN STATES
Notes of a Citizen of Virginia

Originally published by
Henry Regnery Company
Chicago, 1957

Fiftieth Anniversary Edition

Published by Old Line Press
Charles Town, West Virginia

2007

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 THE SOVEREIGN STATES
Notes of a Citizen of Virginia
by James Jackson Kilpatrick

INTRODUCTION
AMONG the more melancholy aspects of the genteel world we live in is a slow decline in the enjoyment that
men once found in the combat of ideas, free and unrestrained. Competition of any sort, indeed, seems to be
regarded these days, in our schools and elsewhere, as somehow not in very good taste. Under the curious
doctrines of the Fair Trade Act, vigorous salesmanship is “unfair,” and retailers are enjoined against
discommoding their fellows. Mr. Stevenson’s criticism of the administration’s foreign policy, during the last
presidential campaign, was not that the policies were so very wrong: They were not “bi-partisan.” With a few
robust exceptions, our writers paint in pastels; our political scholars write a sort of ruffled-sleeve, harpsichord
prose. We duel with soft pillows, or with buttoned foils; our ideas have lace on them; we are importuned to
steer, with moderation, down the middle of the road.

These chamber music proprieties I acknowledge, simply to say, now, that the essay which follows should not be
misunderstood. May it please the court, this is not a work of history; it is a work of advocacy. The intention is
not primarily to inform, but to exhort. The aim is not to be objective; it is to be partisan.

I plead the cause of States’ rights.

My thesis is that our Union is a Union of States; that the meaning of this Union has been obscured, that its
inherent value has been debased and all but lost.

I hold this truth to be self-evident: That government is least evil when it is closest to the people. I submit that
when effective control of government moves away from the people, it becomes a greater evil, a greater restraint
upon liberty.

My object is not to prove that the powers and functions of government have grown steadily more centralized,
more remote from the people, for that proposition requires no proof; it requires only that one open one’s eyes.
Rather, my intention is to plead that the process of consolidation first be halted, then reversed, toward the end
that our Federal government may be strictly limited to its Constitutional functions and the States may again be
encouraged to look after their own affairs, for good or ill.

A long time ago, the geometric mind of Edmund Pendleton offered a theorem. The State and Federal
governments, he said, must follow the paths of parallel lines. Others have conceived the relationship in terms of
spheres, separate but touching. The idea, when all this began, was that neither authority would encroach upon
the other; and in the beginning, it was more feared that the States would usurp Federal powers than the other
way around.

Now the rights and powers of the States are being obliterated. The encroachments of the Federal government
have widened its road to a highway and narrowed the road of the States to a footpath. Having deceptively added

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a dimension to the Federal line, the “broad constructionists” declare their faithful adherence to the plans of the
original draftsmen. Soon, a geometry unknown to Pendleton can proclaim the apparent miracle of parallels that
meet this side of infinity.

I do not know that the sovereign powers of the States may be regained at all. Justice Salmon P. Chase once
remarked, with great satisfaction, that State sovereignty died at Appomattox. But I do most earnestly believe
that an effort must be made to regain these powers. The alternative is for American government to grow steadily
more centralized, steadily more remote from the people, steadily more monolithic and despotic.

Only the States themselves can make the effort; which is to say, only the people of the States. Only if the
citizens of Virginia, as Virginians; or of Texas, as Texans; or of Iowa, as Iowans, insist upon a strict obedience
to the spirit of the Tenth Amendment, can the Federal juggernaut be slowed. Only if the people evidence a
determination once more to do for themselves can the essential vitality of a responsible and resourceful society
be restored.

I do not despair. So long as the I-beams and rafters of the Constitution remain undisturbed, the ravages of
Federal encroachment may be repaired. A latent yearning for personal liberty, an inherited resentment against
the authoritarian state, a drowsing spirit of independence—these may yet be awakened.

But again, the States, as States, will have to do it.

It will not be easy. In many influential quarters, it will not be popular. It is a sweet narcotic that centralists sell.

Yet there is high example to be found in what the States have done before to preserve their identity. They have
not always been spineless. In times past they have resisted, now successfully, now unsuccessfully; but even in
their failures, something has been gained merely in the assertion of State convictions.

My purpose here is first to examine the bases of State sovereignty; then to follow the State and Federal
relationship from its beginnings under the Articles of Confederation through its refinement in the Constitution;
next to review some of the comment on the role the States were expected to play. The place of the States
scarcely had been fixed, it will be submitted, before advocates of consolidation began to whittle it down—first
in the Chisholm case, which led to the Eleventh Amendment, and more memorably in the Alien and Sedition
Acts, which led to the “Doctrine of ’98” and the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of that year. It is proposed
to follow this doctrine of the States’ “right to interpose,” in its various forms and applications down through the
years, with particular emphasis upon the dangers of judicial encroachment and the need for State resistance
against it. Finally, I have in mind to marshal some of the evidence which supports the case for the South in its
immediate conflict with Federal authority, and to review other recent events that seem to me usurpations of the
States’ reserved powers.

So much, then for the plan of this book. The political heirs of Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall will not
care much for it.

J.J.K.
Richmond, Virginia
September, 1956

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THE SOVEREIGN STATES
Notes of a Citizen of Virginia
by James Jackson Kilpatrick

Part 1
The Sovereign States
1. The Beginnings
2. The State
3. The Articles of Confederation
4. “We the People”
5. The States in the Constitution
6. The Prophetic Mr. Henry
7. The States Ratify

The States within the limitations of their powers

not granted, or, in the language of the Tenth
Amendment, “reserved,” are as independent of
the general government as the general
government, within its sphere, is independent of
the States.

JUSTICE SAMUEL NELSON

Collector vs. Day (1871)

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 1
The Beginnings
“THE TRUE DISTINCTION,” said Mr. Pendleton, with some irritation, “is that the two governments are
established for different purposes, and act on different objects.”(1)

This was on the sunny afternoon of Thursday, June 13, 1788, in the New Academy on Shockoe Hill in
Richmond. The Virginia Convention had been grappling for ten days with the new Constitution, and Edmund
Pendleton, aging and crippled, had been sitting in dignified silence for as long as he could stand it. Patrick
Henry, who was a hard man to live with at any time, was being especially difficult. Once before, on the 5th,
Pendleton had attempted to sooth him, but Henry was not to be soothed.

The State and Federal governments would be at war with one another, Henry had predicted, and the State
governments ultimately would be destroyed and consolidated into the general government. One by one their
powers would be snatched from them. A rapacious Federal authority, ever seeking to expand its grasp, could not
be confined by the States.

“Notwithstanding what the worthy gentleman said,” remarked Mr. Pendleton with some warmth, for there were
times when he regarded Mr. Henry as neither worthy nor a gentleman. “I believe I am still correct, and insist
that, if each power is confined within its proper bounds, and to its proper objects, an interference can never
happen. Being for two different purposes, as long as they are limited to the different objects, they can no more
clash than two parallel lines can meet. . . .”

They were big ifs that Edmund Pendleton, a judicious man, here used as qualifications. If the State and Federal
governments were each confined within its proper bounds, he said, the clash could never come. But the Federal
government could not be kept confined, even as Henry feared, and the clash did come. It continues to this day.
Mr. Pendleton’s geometry was fine, but his powers of prophecy (for he believed that each government could be
kept in check) were sadly in error.

To understand how the parallel lines of State and Federal powers have turned awry, it is necessary to look back
at the period before these lines were drawn. The acts of ratification by Virginia and her neighbors were acts of
sovereign States. At stake was their consent to a written constitution. How, it may be inquired, did they come to
be “sovereign States”? What is this concept of State sovereignty?

It would be possible, in any such review, to go back to the great roots of Runnymede, but it will suffice to begin
much later, in the turbulent summer of 1776. The startling commitments of Lexington and Concord were behind
us then; the bitter trials of White Plains, Vincennes, Camden, and Yorktown still lay ahead. March and April and
May had passed—a time of bringing forth, of newness, of fresh hope#151;and great human events had run their
course. Now, in June, a resurgent people made the solemn decision to dissolve the political bands which had
connected them with another. Thus Jefferson’s draft began, thus the Continental Congress adopted it at
Philadelphia; from this moment Americans unborn were to date the years of their independence.

The eloquent beginning of the Declaration—the assertion of truths self-evident and rights beyond alienation—is
well known: It is a towering irony that Jefferson, whose convictions were cemented in the inequality of man,
should have his precise phrase corrupted by the levellers of a bulldozer society. The Declaration’s beginning is
too much recited and too little read.

What counts, for our present purpose, is not the first paragraph, but the last. Let us inquire, What, precisely, was
it that we declared ourselves to be that Fourth of July? Hitherto there had been colonies subject to the King. That

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form of government would now be abolished. We would now solemnly publish and declare to a candid world—
what? That the people of the colonies had formed a free and independent nation? By no means. Or that they
were henceforth a free and independent people? Still no.

This was the declaration: “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND
INDEPENDENT STATES.” Not one State, or one nation, but in the plural—States; and again, in the next
breath, so this multiple birth could not be misunderstood, “that as Free and Independent States, they have full
Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and
Things which Independent States may of right do.”(2)

It had opened, this Declaration, as an enunciation of what often are termed the “human rights,” but it concluded,
in the plainest terms, as a pronouncement of political powers—the political powers of newly created States. And
these powers of war and peace, these powers of alliance and commerce, were published not as the powers of a
national government, but as powers henceforth asserted by thirteen free and independent States.

To be sure, the States were united. Their representatives styled themselves representatives of the united States of
America, in Congress assembled, but it was not the spokesmen of a nation who gathered in parliament. These
were States in Congress. “One out of many,” it is said. In a sense, yes. But the many remained—separate States,
individual entities, each possessed, from that moment, of sovereign rights and powers.

Certainly Jefferson so understood our creation. “The several States,” he was to write much later, “were, from
their first establishment, separate and distinct societies, dependent on no other society of men whatever.”(3)

So Mr. Justice Samuel Chase comprehended it: He considered the Declaration of Independence, “as a
declaration, not that the united colonies jointly, in a collective capacity, were independent States, etc., but that
each of them was a sovereign and independent State, that is, that each of them had a right to govern itself by its
own authority, and its own laws without any control from any other power on earth.” From the Fourth of July,
said Chase, “the American States were de facto as well as de jure in the possession and actual exercise of all the
rights of independent governments. . . . I have ever considered it as the established doctrine of the United States,
that their independence originated from, and commenced with, the declaration of Congress, on the Fourth of
July, 1776; and that no other period can be fixed on for its commencement; and that all laws made by the
legislatures of the several States, after the Declaration of Independence, were the laws of sovereign and
independent governments.”(4)

So, too, the sage and cool-minded Mr. Justice Cushing: “The several States which composed this Union . . .
became entitled, from the time when they declared themselves independent, to all the rights and powers of
sovereign States.”(5)

Even Marshall himself had no doubts: In the beginning, “we were divided into independent States, united for
some purposes, but in most respects sovereign.”(6) The lines which separate the States, he later remarked, were
too clear ever to be misunderstood.

And for a contemporary authority, it is necessary only to turn to Mr. Justice Frankfurter, who some years ago
fell to discussing the dual powers of taxation preserved under the Constitution: “The States,” he said, “after they
formed the Union”—not the people, but the States, “continued to have the same range of taxing power which
they had before, barring only duties affecting exports, imports, and on tonnage.”(7) Regrettably, Mr. Justice
Frankfurter appears in more recent times to have lost his concept of States forming a Union.

It is no matter. Evidence of the States’ individual sovereignty is abundantly available. Consider, for example, the
powers asserted on the part of each State in the Declaration “to levy War, conclude Peace, and contract
Alliances.” Surely these are sovereign powers. The States exercised them, as States, in the Revolutionary War.

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But it is of value to note that New York also very nearly exercised her war powers to enter into formal hostilities
with the State of Vermont. Tensions reached so grave a point that Massachusetts, in 1784, felt compelled to
adopt a formal resolution of neutrality, enjoining her citizens to give “no aid or assistance to either party,” and to
send “no provisions, arms, or ammunition or other necessities to a fortress or garrison” besieged by either
belligerent. When New York adopted a resolution avowing her readiness to “recur to force,” Vermont’s
Governor Chittenden (whose son was to be heard from thirty years later in another row) observed that Vermont
“does not wish to enter into a war with the State of New York.” But should this unhappy contingency result,
Vermont “expects that Congress and the twelve States will observe a strict neutrality, and let the contending
States settle their own controversy.”

They did settle it, of course. New York and Vermont concluded a peace. The point is that no one saw anything
especially remarkable in two separate sovereignties arraying themselves against each other. Vermont was then
an individual political entity, as remote at law as any France or Italy. And New York, though a member of the
Confederation, and hence technically required to obtain the consent of Congress before waging war, had every
right to maintain a standing army for her own defense.

The status of the individual States as separate sovereign powers was recognized on higher authority than the
proclamations of Vermont and Massachusetts. It is worth our while to keep in mind the first article of the treaty
of September 3, 1783, by which the War of the Revolution came to an end:

His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode
Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland,
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia to be free, sovereign and independent States; that he treats
with them as such.

More than five years earlier, a treaty of amity and commerce with France had established the same sovereign
status of the contracting parties. Louis XVI treated with the thirteen American States, but he recognized each of
them as a separate power. And it is interesting to note that Virginia, feeling some action desirable to complete
the treaty, prior to action by Congress, on June 4, 1779, undertook solemnly to ratify this treaty with France on
her own. By appropriate resolution, transmitted by Governor Jefferson to the French minister at Philadelphia,
the sovereign Commonwealth of Virginia declared herself individually bound by the French treaty.(8) In terms
of international law, Virginia was a nation; in terms of domestic law, she was a sovereign State.

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 2
The State
TO REVIEW the process by which the colonies became States is not necessarily to answer the basic question,
What is a State? It is a troublesome word. The standard definition is that a State is “a political body, or body
politic; any body of people occupying a definite territory and politically organized under one government,
especially one that is not subject to external control.” Chief Justice Chase, in Texas vs. White,(9) put it this way:
“A State, in the ordinary sense of the Constitution, is a political community of free citizens, occupying a
territory of defined boundaries, and organized under a government sanctioned and limited by a written
Constitution, and established by the consent of the governed.” In the Cherokee case, John Marshall described a
State as “a distinct political society, separated from others, capable of managing its own affairs and governing
itself.”(10)

Thus, variously, a State is defined as a body, a community, and a distinct society. Plainly, mere boundary lines
are not enough; a tract of waste and uninhabited land cannot constitute a State. Nor are people, as such,
sufficient to constitute a State. James Brown Scott once offered this clear and succinct definition:

The State is an artificial person, representing and controlled by its members, but not synonymous or identical
with them. Created for a political purpose, it is a body politic. It is a distinct body, an artificial person; it has a
will distinct from its members, although its exercise is controlled by them; it has rights and duties distinct from
its members, but subject to being changed by them; it may hold property distinct from its members, but in trust
for them; it may act separately and distinctly from them and bind them by its acts, but only insofar as it is
authorized by the law of its creation, and subject to being changed by the source of that power.(11)

Thus the State is seen as a continuing political being, controlled by its citizens and yet controlling them. The
State can be bound in ways that its own people cannot be bound; it can exercise powers that no citizen or group
of citizens may exercise for themselves. The State may buy, sell, hold, grant, convey; it may tax and spend; it
may sue, and if it consent, be sued; it exists to create law and to execute law, to punish crime, administer justice,
regulate commerce, enter into compacts with other States. Yet there is no State until a community of human
beings create a State; and no State may exist without the will and the power of human beings to preserve it.

It is this combination of will and power which lies at the essence of the State in being. This is sovereignty. In the
crisp phrase of John Taylor of Caroline, sovereignty is “the will to enact, the power to execute.”(12) Long books
have been written on the nature of sovereignty, but they boil down to those necessities: The will to make, the
power to unmake.(13)

It was this power, this will, that the people-as-States claimed for themselves in 1776. Henceforth, they said, we
are sovereign: The State government is not sovereign, nor is any citizen by himself sovereign. By the “sovereign
State” we mean we citizens, the State; we collectively, within our established boundaries; this community of
people; we alone who are possessed of the power to create or to abandon.

God knows it was a great, a priceless, power these people-as-States claimed for themselves. True, not everyone
saw it that way. Mr. Justice Story, for one, never grasped the concept of States. Nor did Jackson. Albert J.
Beveridge, in his biography of Marshall, refers sneeringly to the States as “these pompous sovereignties,” but in
a way, Beveridge’s is perhaps a high acknowledgment of the simple truth: These infant States were
sovereignties, and the people within them were proudly jealous of the fact. They saw themselves, in
Blackstone’s phrase, “a supreme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority.”(14) This, among other things,
was the aim they had fought for. It cannot be imagined that they ever would have relinquished this high power
of sovereignty except in the most explicit terms.

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 3
The Articles of Confederation
IN TIME, the Continental Congress gave way to the Articles of Confederation. The Articles merit examination
with the utmost care; they are too little studied, and there is much to be learned from them.

First proposed in 1778, the Articles became binding upon all the States with Maryland’s ratification in 1781.
Throughout this period, as the war ran on, each of the States was individually sovereign, each wholly
autonomous. Mr. Justice Iredell was to observe, in 1795, that had the individual States decided not to unite
together, each would have gone its own way, because each “possessed all the powers of sovereignty, internal
and external . . . as completely as any of the ancient kingdoms or republics of the world, which never yet had
formed, or thought of forming, any sort of Federal union whatever.”(15)

But they did form a Federal union—a “perpetual union between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts
Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.” They styled themselves, “The United States
of America,” and in the very second article of their compact, they put this down so no one might miss it:

Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is
not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.(16)

The third article is almost equally brief, and may be quoted in less space than would be required to summarize
it:

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 pretence whatever.

There will be seen, in these opening paragraphs, the genesis of Constitutional provisions that were to follow in
less than a decade. Here is the forerunner of the Tenth Amendment, with its reservation of undelegated powers
to the States or to the people; here are the aims set forth of “common defense” and the “general welfare.”

The Fourth Article advanced other phrases that have come down to us: The free inhabitants of each State
(“paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from justice excepted”) were to be entitled to “all the privileges and
immunities of free citizens in the several States.” Here, too, one finds the provision, later to be inserted
substantially verbatim in Article IV of the Constitution of 1787, providing for the extradition of fugitives. Here
the States mutually agreed that “full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records, acts,
and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State.”

The fifth Article provided for representation of the States in Congress. There were to be no less than two, no
more than seven delegates from each State. They would assemble on the first Monday in November of every
year. In this Congress, each State cast one vote; each State paid the salary and maintenance of its own delegates.
These provisions, of course, were later abandoned; but we may note that the Fifth Article prohibited delegates to
the Congress from “holding any office under the United States for which he or another for his benefit receives
any salary, fees, or emolument of any kind,” and also provided that “freedom of speech and debate in Congress
shall not be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Congress.” Both provisions were to turn up
later in Article I, Section 6, of the Constitution.

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The Sixth and Seventh Articles dealt generally with limitations upon the States in terms of foreign affairs and
the waging of war. Again, many a familiar phrase leaps from this much maligned compact of Confederation. No
State, nor the Congress, was to grant a title of nobility; no two or more States were to enter into any treaty,
confederation or alliance without the consent of the other States in Congress assembled; no State was to keep
vessels of war in time of peace (“except such number as shall be deemed necessary by the United States in
Congress assembled”), nor was any State to engage in war without the consent of Congress “unless such State
be actually invaded by enemies, or . . . the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay. . . .”

The Eighth Article provided for defraying the expenses of war among the States “in proportion to the value of
all land within each State,” and the Ninth Article dealt with the powers of Congress. Once more, the origin of a
dozen specific phrases in our present Constitution is evident. Congress was given the “sole and exclusive right
and power of determining on peace and war.” It was to enter into treaties and alliances, establish certain courts,
fix standard weights and measures, and establish post offices.(17) But the Congress alone could do almost none
of these things—it could exercise no important power—without the consent of nine of the member States.

The remaining four articles are of less interest and concern, though it may be noted that in three places, the
framers of the Articles of Confederation provided that their union was a permanent union. The articles were to
be inviolably observed by the States the delegates respectively represented, “and the Union shall be perpetual.”

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 4
“We the People”
OF COURSE, it wasn’t perpetual at all. Before six years had elapsed, the States came to recognize grave defects
in the Articles of Confederation. And because they were sovereign States—because they had the will to enact
and the power to execute, because they who had made could unmake—they set out to do the job again.

What they made, this time, was the Constitution of the United States. So much has been written of the
deliberations that summer of 1787 in Philadelphia—so many critics have examined every word of the great
document which came forth—that probably no new light can be shed upon it here. Yet the Constitutions of most
States command their citizens to recur frequently to fundamental principles, and the commandment is too
valuable an admonition to be passed by. There is much of interest to be found if one examines the Constitution,
the debates and the commentaries of the time, in terms of the relationship there established between the States
and the new Federal government they formed.

It may be inquired, was sovereignty here surrendered in whole or in part? What powers were delegated, what
powers retained? What were the functions to be performed by the States in the future? Was it ever intended that
the States should be reduced to the weakling role thrust upon them in our own time? We must inquire whether
this proud possession of State sovereignty, so eloquently proclaimed in 1776, so resolutely affirmed in the
Articles of 1781, so clearly recognized in the events of the time, somehow vanished, died, turned to dust, totally
ceased to exist in the period of the next six years.

Now, the argument here advanced is this—it is the argument of John Taylor of Caroline and John Randolph of
Roanoke—that sovereignty, like chastity, cannot be surrendered “in part.” This was the argument also of
Calhoun: “I maintain that sovereignty is in its nature indivisible. It is the supreme power in a State, and we
might just as well speak of half a square, or half a triangle, as of half a sovereignty.”(18) This was the position,
too, of the bellicose George Troup of Georgia, of Alexander H. Stephens, of Jefferson Davis. It is the position of
plain common sense: Supreme and ultimate power must be precisely that. Finality knows no degrees. In law, as
in mountain climbing, there comes a point at which the pinnacle is reached; nothing higher or greater remains.
And so it is with the States of the American Union. In the last resort, it is their prerogative alone (not that of
Congress, not that of the Supreme Court, not that of the “whole people”) to make or unmake our fundamental
law. The argument here is that the States, in forming a new perpetual union to replace their old perpetual union,
remained in essence what they had been before: Separate, free, and independent States. They surrendered
nothing to the Federal government they created. Some of their powers they delegated; all of their sovereignty
they retained.

It is keenly important that this distinction be understood. There is a difference between “sovereignty” and
“sovereign power.” The power to coin money, or to levy taxes, is a sovereign power, but it is not sovereignty.
Powers can be delegated, limited, expanded, or withdrawn, but it is through the exercise of sovereignty that
these changes take place. Sovereignty is the moving river; sovereign powers the stone at the mill. Only while the
river flows can the inanimate stone revolve. To be sure, sovereignty can be lost—it can be lost by conquest, as
in war; the extent or character of sovereignty can be changed, as in the acquisition or relinquishment of territory
or the annexation of new peoples; sovereignty can be divided, when two States are created of one. But properly
viewed, sovereignty is cause; sovereign powers, the effect: The wind that blows; the branches that move.
Sovereignty is the essence, the life spirit, the soul: And in this Republic, sovereignty remains today where it was
vested in 1776, in the people. But in the people as a whole? No. In the people-as-States.

The delusion that sovereignty is vested in the whole people of the United States is one of the strangest
misconceptions of our public life. This hallucination has been encouraged, if not directly espoused, by such

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eminent figures as Marshall, Story, and Andrew Jackson. It is still embraced by excessively literal and
unthinking fellows who read “we the people” in the preamble to the Constitution, and cry triumphantly, “that
means everybody!” It does not; it never did.

The preamble to the abandoned Articles of Confederation, it was noted, declared the articles “binding between
the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New
York,” and so forth. The preamble offered by the Convention of 1787, reads:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic
Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty
to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The opening few words were questioned repeatedly by Patrick Henry in the Virginia Convention of 1788. He
kept asking, querulously, what was meant by “we the people,” but he got no very satisfactory answer for his
pains.(19) Governor Randolph ducked the question,(20) and Pendleton missed the point. Pendleton asked,
rhetorically, “who but the people have a right to form government?” and the answer, obviously, in America, is
“no one.” Then Pendleton said this:

If the objection be, that the Union ought to be not of the people, but of the State governments, then I think the
choice of the former very happy and proper. What have the State governments to do with it?(21)

Again, the obvious answer is, “the State governments have nothing to do with it,” but that was not the question
Henry asked. There is a plain distinction between “we the States” and “we the State governments,” for States
endure while governments fall. It was Madison who came closest to answering the insistent Henry. Who are the
parties to the Constitution? The people, said Madison, to be sure, are the parties to it, but “not the people as
composing one great body.” Rather, it is “the people as composing thirteen sovereignties.” And he added:

Were it . . . a consolidated government, the assent of a majority of the people would be sufficient for its
establishment; and, as a majority have adopted it already, we remaining States would be bound by the act of the
majority, even if they unanimously reprobated it. . . . But, sir, no State is bound by it, as it is, without its own
consent.(22)

Colonel Henry Lee took the same point of view in responding to Patrick Henry. Light Horse Harry spoke as
other proponents of the Constitution did, in irritation and perplexity. He could not comprehend why Henry’s
question should even be asked. Obviously, the “we the people” mentioned in the preamble—the “we the people”
there and then engaged in ratifying the Constitution—were we “the people of Virginia.” If the people of Virginia
“do not adopt it, it will always be null and void as to us.”(23)

Here Lee touched and tossed aside what doubtless was so clear to others that they could not understand what
Henry was quibbling about. Of course, “we the people” meant what Madison and Lee found so obvious: It
meant “we the people of the States.” Why argue the point? “I take this,” said Randolph testily, “to be one of the
least and most trivial objections that will be made to the Constitution.”(24)

The self-evident fact, as plain as the buttons on their coats, was that the whole people, the mass of people from
Georgia to New Hampshire, obviously had nothing to do with the ratification of the Constitution. The basic
charter of our Union never was submitted to popular referendum, taken simultaneously among the 3,000,000
inhabitants of the country on some Tuesday in 1788. Ratification was achieved by the people of the States,
acting in their sovereign capacity not as “Americans,” for there is no “State of America,” but in their sovereign
capacity as citizens of the States of Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, and Georgia.

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This was the sovereign power that sired the new Union, breathed upon it, gave it life—the power of the people
of the States, acting as States, binding themselves as States, seeking to form a more perfect union not of people
but of States. And if it be inquired, as a matter of drafting, why the preamble of the Articles of Confederation
spelled out thirteen States and the preamble of the Constitution referred only to “we the people,” a simple,
uncomplicated explanation may be advanced: The framers of the Constitution, in the Summer of 1787, had no
way of knowing how many States would assent to the compact.

Suppose they had begun the preamble, as they thought of doing, “We the people of New Hampshire,
Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island,” etc., and the State of Rhode Island had refused to ratify?

It very nearly did. It was not until May 29, 1790, by a vote of 34-32, that Rhode Island agreed to join a union
that actually had been created with New Hampshire’s ratification nearly two full years before. Given a switch of
two votes, Rhode Island might have remained, to this day, as foreign to the United States (in terms of
international law) as any Luxembourg or Switzerland.

Some of these forebodings clearly passed through the minds of the delegates at Philadelphia. When the
preamble first appears in the notes, on August 6, it reads: “We the people of the States of New Hampshire,
Massachusetts,” etc., “do ordain, declare and establish the following Constitution.” In that form it was
tentatively approved on August 7. But the preamble, in that form, never is mentioned again. When the document
came back from the Committee on Style in early September, the preamble had been amended to eliminate the
spelled-out names of States, and to make it read simply that “we the people” ordain and establish. The change
was not haggled over. No significance was attached to it. Why arouse antagonism in New York or North
Carolina (where there was opposition enough already) by presuming to speak, in the preamble, as if it were
unnecessary for New York or North Carolina even to debate the matter? The tactful and prudent thing was to
name no States. Only the people-as-States could create the Union; only the people in ratifying States would be
bound, as States, by its provisions.

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 5
The States in the Constitution
IN THE end, that was the way the compact read. It bound States—“The ratification of the Conventions of nine
States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between”—between whom?—“between the
States so ratifying the same.” Not among people; it was “between States.” And this proposal was put forward
“by the unanimous consent,” not of delegates assembled or of people gathered, but by “the unanimous consent
of the States present the 17th day of September in the year of our Lord 1787. . . .”

On the plain evidence of the instrument itself, it is therefore clear: States consented to the drafting of the
Constitution; States undertook to bind themselves by its provisions. If nine States ratified, the Constitution
would bind those nine; if ten, those ten. Rhode Island had not even attended the convention; “poor, despised
Rhode Island,” as Patrick Henry later was to describe her, could stay aloof if she chose. There was no thought
here of people in the mass. There was thought only of people-as-States, and while the new Constitution would of
course act directly upon people—that was to be its revolutionary change—it would reach those people only
because they first were people-of-States.

The one essential prerequisite was for the State, as a State, to ratify; then the people of the State would become
themselves subject to the Constitution. No individual human being, in his own capacity, possibly could assent to
the new compact or bind himself to its provisions. Only as a citizen of Virginia or Georgia or Massachusetts
could he become a citizen also of the United States.

Madison recognized this. He acknowledged in his famed Federalist 39 that ratification of the Constitution must
come from the people “not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and
independent States to which they respectively belong.” Each State, he said, in ratifying the Constitution, “is
considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act.” This
fact lay at the essence of the Federal union being formed. The States, and within them their local governments,
were to be “no more subject, within their respective spheres, to the general authority, than the general authority
is subject to them, within its own sphere.” The jurisdiction of the Federal government was to extend “to certain
enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other
objects.”(25) Even the most casual reading of the Constitution, it may be submitted, abundantly supports
Madison’s comment here.

But the Constitution ought not to be read casually. Viewed from the standpoint of State and Federal relations,
what does the Constitution say and do? The rubrics do not demand, before an ordinary mortal may explore the
question, that he be ordained a Constitutional lawyer or put on the chasuble of the bench. Our Constitution is not
the property of a juridical clergy only. The laity may read it too, and with equal acuity and understanding. The
terms are not ambiguous.

The first thing to note, perhaps, is that the words “State” or “States” appear no fewer than ninety-four times,
either as proper nouns or pronominals, in the brief six thousand words of the original seven articles. The one
theme that runs steadily through the whole of the instrument is the knitting together of States: It is a union that is
being formed, and while the people are concerned for themselves and their posterity, the Constitution is to be
established binding States.

Legislative powers, to begin at the beginning, are vested not in one national parliament of the people, but in a
Congress of the United States. The word Congress was chosen with precision; it repeated and confirmed the
political relationship of the preceding eleven years, when there had been first a Continental Congress and then a
Congress under the Articles of Confederation.

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This Congress is to consist of two houses. The first is the House of Representatives, whose members are to be
chosen “by the people of the several States.” And here, in the very second paragraph, the framers encountered
an opportunity to choose between a “national” and a “federal” characteristic: They might have established
uniform national qualifications for the franchise, but they did not. Electors qualified to vote for candidates for
the House of Representatives are to have “the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch
of the State Legislature.”

Representatives and direct taxes are to be apportioned—how? “Among the several States which may be
included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers.” How is this enumeration to be determined?
The provision should be noted with care, for it is the first of four clauses that speaks eloquently of the plural
nature of our Union: “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the
Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by
Law direct.” (Emphasis supplied.) Now, the antecedent of they is not “Congress,” but “United States.” Nowhere
in the whole of the Constitution or in any of the subsequent amendments is the United States an “it.” The
singular never appears.

What else sheds light in the second section of Article I? We find that “each State shall have at Least one
Representative,” whereupon follows a roll call of the States themselves: “Until such enumeration shall be made,
the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight,” and so forth. And when
vacancies happen “in the Representation from any State,” the Governor thereof is to issue a writ of election.

The dignity and sovereignty of States are made still more evident in the composition of the Senate. It is to be
composed “of two Senators from each State,” and whereas Representatives are required to be inhabitants of the
States “in which” they shall be chosen, Senators must be inhabitants of the States “for which” they shall be
chosen.(26)

It is in section four that the first grant of authority to the Federal government appears: “The Times, Places and
Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the
Legislature thereof; but”—and here the qualified concession—“the Congress may at any time by Law make or
alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

The delegations of power to a Federal government appear most fully, of course, in Section 8, but it is worth
noting that not all the powers delegated to Congress are exclusive and unqualified powers. Thus, the Congress
may raise and support armies, “but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two
Years.” Thus, the Congress may provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing
such part of the militia as may be employed in the service of the United States, but there is reserved “to the
States respectively” the appointment of officers and the authority to train their militia according to regulations
established by Congress. Thus, too, Congress may exercise Federal authority over Federally-owned property
within the States, but how is such property to be acquired? The authority of the Congress extends only to those
places “purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be,” and this applies
not only to military and naval installations but also to “other needful Buildings.”

Several provisions in Section 9 merit attention. As a concession to the slave trade—one of the essential
compromises without which the Constitution never would have come into being at all—it was provided that “the
Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit,” shall not
be prohibited prior to 1808. Then follow seven paragraphs of specific restrictions upon the powers of Congress.
The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended; no bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall
be passed; no direct tax shall be levied except according to the census of the people as a whole; no tax or duty
shall be laid on articles exported “from any State”; and—again emphasizing the separateness of the member
States forming the union—“No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the

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Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter,
clear, or pay Duties in another.”

In Section 10, the States undertook to restrict themselves. No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or
confederation; no State shall coin money or make anything but gold and silver legal tender; no State shall make
any law impairing the obligation of contracts. Yet even here, the prohibitions are not without qualification.
Thus, the States reserved to themselves the right to levy tariffs on imports or exports sufficient to execute their
inspection laws; and though the fact is often forgotten, the States even reserved to themselves the solemn power
they had claimed under the Articles of Confederation, to “engage in war,” as States, if “actually invaded, or in
such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

In the second Article of the Constitution, dealing with the Presidency, the framers again had an opportunity to
choose between national and federal characteristics. At least twice during the convention of 1787, on July 17
and again on August 24, it was proposed that the President be chosen by popular, national election, but each
time the proposal was overwhelmingly rejected. Instead, the framers agreed upon the plan of presidential
electors which exists to this day: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may
direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State
may be entitled in the Congress.” These electors are to meet “in their respective States.” If any person fail to
obtain a majority of the electoral vote, the House of Representatives is to elect a President, but how is this to be
done? “In chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having
one Vote.” Other protective clauses follow, still further emphasizing the role and the importance of the States:
“A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority
of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice.”

Article III, defining the judicial power of the United States, contains several provisions of interest in this review.
We may note, for example, two further uses of the plural: First, the judicial power is to extend “to all Cases, in
Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which
shall be made, under their authority.” Second, treason against the United States is to consist “only in levying
War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies.” Because the authority of the Court will be considered at
length in a later chapter, it will suffice here merely to point out that nowhere in Article III is the Court given
jurisdiction over controversies between a State and the United States. That proposal was specifically advanced
during the convention, and specifically rejected.

Every section—indeed, every paragraph—of Article IV touches upon the federal nature of the Union. Full faith
and credit are to be given “in each State” to the acts and judicial proceedings “of every other State.” If this were
not a federal union, the provision would be nonsense. Beyond this, “the Citizens of each State” shall be entitled
to all privileges and immunities of citizens “in the several States.” A person charged “in any State” with crime,
who shall flee from justice “and be found in another State,” shall be delivered up on demand “to be removed to
the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.”

Then comes the provision that Northern States were to flout over a period of thirty years: “No Person held to
Service or Labour in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law
or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the
Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.”

Finally, we may note in Article IV the provision for admitting new States “into this Union” (not this Nation, but
this Union): “No new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be
formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the
States concerned as well as of the Congress.”

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Article V had best be quoted in full. It has not been changed by so much as an apostrophe in the years since it
came from Philadelphia in September of 1787. It still fixes and defines the sovereign power:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this
Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention
for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this
Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three
fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no
Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner
affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent,
shall be deprived of it’s equal Suffrage in the Senate. [Emphasis supplied.]

Pause for a moment over this article of the Constitution. We are dealing here with Taylor’s “will to enact” and
“power to execute” we are dealing with Marshall’s “power to make and unmake.” It was plainly envisioned by
the framers that their work would require amendment through the years. “That useful alterations will be
suggested by experience, could not but be foreseen,” Madison was to write.(27) There was a double aim in the
provision, even a triple aim. Article V, Madison tells us, was intended, first, to guard equally against too-easy
amendment on the one hand and too-difficult amendment on the other. It was drafted, secondly, to permit
amendments to originate both with the Federal and with the State governments. But it was intended, finally, to
leave the ultimate decision upon changing the Constitution to the sovereign States themselves—not to the
people as a mass, nor even to a bare majority of the States as such. It was recognized that the great, overriding
principle of protection for minorities should apply here as bindingly as it was to apply elsewhere. If one-fourth-
of-the-States-plus-one should object to a change in the Constitution—even if that change were desired by three-
fourths-minus-one (and even if this larger fraction should include the great bulk of the total population)—the
change could not be engrafted to the Constitution.

Article VI is brief. Its first provision covers debts and engagements entered into under the Articles of
Confederation and continues these obligations under the proposed new Constitution; its third provision prohibits
any religious test as a qualification for public office and requires an oath to support the Constitution of all public
officers, both State and Federal.

It is the second provision that merits brief attention in this summary review:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties
made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land;
and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the
Contrary notwithstanding.

Let us go back: What is to be supreme? Three things. First, “this Constitution.” Secondly, “laws of the United
States which shall be made in pursuance thereof.” Third, treaties made “under the authority of the United
States.” That is all. Not executive orders of the President. Not even judgments of the Supreme Court. The
Constitution, the laws made in pursuance thereof, the treaties.

In passing, note the phrase “law of the land.” It stems originally from the Magna Charta; but as it appears in the
Constitution, “law of the land” was merely a substitution, proposed by the committee on style, for “law of the
several States and their citizens and inhabitants.” The object was to extend this new supreme law to territories as
well as to the States.(28) And this phrase, “law of the land,” is as close as the Constitution ever comes to
suggesting a “nation.” Actually the word “nation” or the word “national” never appears in the Constitution.(29)

The aim, we will recall, was to form “a more perfect Union.” Representatives and taxes were to be apportioned
among the several States which may be included “within this Union.” The militia may be called forth to execute

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“the Laws of the Union.” The President is to provide Congress with information on the “State of the Union.”
New States are to be admitted “into this Union.” The guarantee of a republican form of government goes “to
every State in this Union.” But never, at any point, are the United States described, in the Constitution, as
comprising a “nation.”

This is not to contend, of course, that ours is not a nation, or that the Federal government does not operate
“nationally.” It is only to suggest that the deliberate terms of the Constitution speak for themselves, and should
be heeded: Our country is, first and foremost, originally and still, a union of States. And when we speak of the
“law of the land,” it should be kept steadily in mind that “the land” is a federal union, in which each of the
States stands co-equal with every other State. The Constitution is supreme not only in its authority over each
State, but also in its protection over each State. And each State, each respective State, is entitled to rely upon the
Constitution as embodying supreme law that all other States must adhere to with equal fidelity, like it or not,
until the Constitution be changed by the States themselves.

Note, too, the careful qualification that defines laws enacted by the Congress. Just any laws of the United States
are not enough: Laws, to be binding, must be laws made in pursuance of the Constitution. Any attempted
statutes that invade the residuary authority of the States, Hamilton tells us,(30) “will be merely acts of
usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such.” And he adds, at another point, that:

There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to
the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the
Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the
servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men
acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.(31)

Surely, it may be urged that precisely the same standard must be applied to other branches of the Federal
government—the executive and judicial no less than the legislative. By extension, thus, judgments of the Court,
to be supreme law of the land, must be made pursuant to the Constitution. A judgment of the Court, so violative
of the clear terms and understandings of the Constitution as to invade the residuary authority of the States, must
also be regarded as a usurpation, and should deserve to be treated as such. The argument will be pursued at
greater length hereafter.

Finally, this brief examination of the Constitution from the standpoint of the States may be concluded with a
second look at Article VII. It should be read carefully, for this is the clause that binds: “The Ratification of the
Conventions of nine States”—not, again, the approval of a majority of the people in a popular referendum, but
the ratification of nine States—“shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States
so ratifying the Same.”

Thus, on September 17, the Convention concluded its work. George Washington, as president of the
Convention, transmitted the document to the Congress. A prophetic sentence appeared in his letter, as he
mentioned the compromises necessary for the surrender of sovereign powers: “It is at all times difficult to draw
with precision the line between those rights which must be surrendered, and those which may be reserved.” The
States had done the best they could through their delegates. Eager to consolidate their Union, each State had
been disposed “to be less rigid on points of inferior magnitude than might have been otherwise expected.” They
launched the ship.

“Well, Doctor,” said the lady to Mr. Franklin, “what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

“A republic,” replied the doctor, “if you can keep it.”

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 6
The Prophetic Mr. Henry
FOR THE States’ understanding of what the Constitution was to mean to them, as States, we can look not only
to the internal evidence of the Constitution itself, but to the debates in the ratifying conventions and to some of
the contemporary criticism, notably in the Federalist papers. We can look, also, to some of the pronouncements
of the Supreme Court from time to time, and to the writings of scholars of our own day.

The evidence is overwhelming. By written compact, solemnly ratified, the States agreed mutually to delegate
certain of their sovereign powers to a federal government. They enumerated these powers. All other powers they
reserved to themselves, and these reserved powers did not need to be enumerated: The reserved powers
constituted all inherent powers of sovereign States, not specifically abridged.

So plain was this understanding that the feeling most frequently encountered, in reading comments of the period,
is one of incredulity that anyone should doubt it.

“The proposed Constitution,” said Hamilton, “so far from implying an abolition of the State governments,
makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate,
and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power.”(32)

So, too, said Madison:

It is to be remembered that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and
administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of
the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any. The subordinate governments,
which can extend their care to all other objects which can be separately provided for, will retain their due
authority and activity.(33)

Neither Hamilton nor Madison could quite imagine the Federal government ever seriously encroaching upon the
States.

“Allowing the utmost latitude to the love of power which any reasonable man can require,” said Hamilton, “I
confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons intrusted with the administration of the general
government could ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that description. The regulation of the mere
domestic police of a State appears to me to hold out slender allurements to ambition. Commerce, finance,
negotiation, and war seem to comprehend all the objects which have charms for minds governed by that passion;
and all the powers necessary to those objects ought, in the first instance, to be lodged in the national
depository.”(34)

Then he added, with a singular absence of prophecy:

The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same State, the supervision of agriculture and of
other concerns of a similar nature, all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local
legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction. It is therefore improbable that there should
exist a disposition in the Federal councils to usurp the powers with which they are connected. . . .

It will always be far more easy for the State governments to encroach upon the national authorities, than for the
national government to encroach upon the State authorities.

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Madison, also, imagined that the Federal government would “be disinclined to invade the rights of the individual
States, or the prerogatives of their governments.”(35) For his part, Hamilton thought it more probable that the
States would encroach upon the Federal government, and he imagined that in such contests the State
governments, because they “will commonly possess most influence” over the people, would dominate Federal
agencies “to the disadvantage of the Union.” However, all such conjectures Hamilton viewed as “extremely
vague and fallible.”(36) He preferred to assume that the people “will always take care to preserve the
constitutional equilibrium between the general and the State governments.”

In Number 45, Madison treated at considerable length the widespread apprehension that the States would be
obliterated. Some of his comments have been outdated; what he has to say about the election of Senators, for
example, unhappily has been superseded by the misfortune of the Seventeenth Amendment. Some of his other
observations, dealing with functions of what was to become the Bureau of Internal Revenue, may occasion some
wry reflection on the lengths by which even a Madison could miss his guess. But as contemporary evidence of
the role guaranteed to the States, Number 45 justifies quotation at some length:

The State governments will have the advantage of the Federal government, whether we compare them in respect
to the immediate dependence of the one on the other; to the weight of personal influence which each side will
possess; to the powers respectively vested in them to the predilection and probable support of the people; to the
disposition and faculty of resisting and frustrating the measures of each other.

The State governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal government; whilst the
latter is nowise essential to the operation or organization of the former. Without the intervention of the State
legislatures, the President of the United States cannot be elected at all. They must in all cases have a great share
in his appointment, and will, perhaps, in most cases, of themselves determine it. The Senate will be elected
absolutely and exclusively by the State legislatures. Even the House of Representatives, though drawn
immediately from the people, will be chosen very much under the influence of that class of men, whose
influence over the people obtains for themselves an election into the State legislatures. Thus, each of the
principal branches of the federal government will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the State
governments, and must consequently feel a dependence, which is much more likely to beget a disposition too
obsequious than too overbearing towards them. On the other side, the component parts of the State governments
will in no instance be indebted for their appointment to the direct agency of the federal government, and very
little, if at all, to the local influence of its members.

The number of individuals employed under the Constitution of the United States will be much smaller than the
number employed under the particular States. There will consequently be less of personal influence on the side
of the former than of the latter. The members of the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments of thirteen
and more States, the justices of peace, officers of militia, ministerial officers of justice, with all the county,
corporation, and town officers, for three millions and more of people, intermixed, and having particular
acquaintance with every class and circle of people, must exceed, beyond all proportion, both in number and
influence, those of every description who will be employed in the administration of the federal system. Compare
the members of the three great departments of the thirteen States, excluding from the judiciary department the
justices of peace, with the members of the corresponding departments of the single government of the Union;
compare the militia officers of three millions of people with the military and marine officers of any
establishment which is within the compass of probability, or, I may add, of possibility, and in this view alone,
we may pronounce the advantage of the States to be decisive.

If the federal government is to have collectors of revenue, the State governments will have theirs also. And as
those of the former will be principally on the seacoast, and not very numerous, whilst those of the latter will be
spread over the face of the country, and will be very numerous, the advantage in this view also lies on the same
side. It is true, that the Confederacy is to possess, and may exercise, the power of collecting internal as well as
external taxes throughout the States; but it is probable that this power will not be resorted to, except for

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supplemental purposes of revenue; that an option will then be given to the States to supply their quotas by
previous collections of their own; and that the eventual collection, under the immediate authority of the Union,
will generally be made by the officers, and according to the rules, appointed by the several States. . . .

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which
are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on
external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will,
for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in
the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order,
improvement, and prosperity of the State.

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger;
those of the State governments in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small
proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government.
The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers may be rendered to the national defence, the less frequent will be
those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the governments of the particular States.

If the new Constitution be examined with accuracy and candor, it will be found that the change which it
proposes consists much less in the addition of NEW POWERS to the Union, than in the invigoration of its
ORIGINAL POWERS. The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition
which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained. The powers relating to war and peace,
armies and fleets, treaties and finance, with the other more considerable powers, are all vested in the existing
Congress by the articles of Confederation. The proposed change does not enlarge these powers; it only
substitutes a more effectual mode of administering them. . . .

Even John Marshall, who did more than any man in our history to aggrandize the Federal government and to
weaken the States, never doubted the basic structure of divided powers. Consider, briefly, his comment in the
famed case of McCulloch vs. Maryland.(37) The case arose when Congress established the Bank of the United
States, and Maryland undertook to levy a tax upon the bank’s Baltimore branch; James McCulloch, the cashier,
refused to pay the tax, and Maryland sued.

The legal questions were two: Did Congress have power to incorporate the bank, and secondly, did Maryland
have power to tax it? Marshall answered the first one yes, the second, no. With the bulk of his reasoning, strict
constructionists and apostles of States’ rights will disagree: Marshall’s sophisticated mind did not boggle at
stretching “necessary” to mean “convenient.” In considering the actual act of ratification by which the Union
was formed, Marshall was not much impressed by the fact, which he could not escape, that the people met in
State conventions. “Where else should they have assembled?” he asked. But even here, a couple of sentences
merit quotation as evidence from the States’ greatest detractor:

It is true, [the people] assembled in their several States—and where else should they have assembled? No
political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of
compounding the American people into one common mass. Of consequence, when they act, they act in their
States.

Marshall went on in his opinion to confuse “States” and “State governments,” thus setting up a convenient straw
man to batter down. No one ever had contended that the Constitution was ratified by State governments, but
Marshall, with a glittering display of intellectual swordsmanship, neatly skewered the non-existent objection.
Then he went on to say:

This government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers. The principle, that it can exercise only
the powers granted to it, would seem too apparent to have required to be enforced by all those arguments which

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its enlightened friends, while it was depending before the people, found it necessary to urge. That principle is
now universally admitted. But the question respecting the extent of the powers actually granted, is perpetually
arising, and will probably continue to arise, as long as our system shall exist.

True enough, the question of “the extent of powers” does continue to arise to this day, though the doctrines of
Marshall have so pervaded public thinking that it often is forgotten that the Federal government has any
limitations whatever.(38) But the separateness of the States and the nature of their delegated powers were
clearly recognized when the Constitution was created. The prophets who foresaw the trend toward
consolidation—notably Patrick Henry and George Mason—were told they were old women, seeing ghosts.

Consider, if you will, the debate on ratification in Virginia. The transcript offers some absorbing reading. If the
clash of a Henry and a Mason with a Pendleton and a Madison does not prompt reflection upon subsequent
corruption of the Constitution, at the very least their battle must lead to regrets at the decline in the quality of
today’s legislative debates. There were giants in those days. This was, to paraphrase Marshall, a Constitution
they were debating.(39) What was said of the relationship of the States and the Federal government?

Go back in time. This was a sultry summer in Richmond. At least twice the brief convention was interrupted by
thunder storms so severe the delegates were forced to recess. Tempers flared sharply: At one point Edmund
Randolph, infuriated with Patrick Henry, was prepared to let their friendship “fall like Lucifer, never to rise
again.” They began on Monday, June 2; they adjourned sine die on Friday, June 27. Into those four weeks, the
Virginians of 1788 packed a world of profound reflection upon the meaning and intention of the Constitution.

Edmund Pendleton served as president of the Virginia Convention. He was a remarkable man: lawyer, scholar,
statesman, thinker. In advocating ratification, Pendleton was joined by James Madison, John Marshall, Edmund
Randolph, and Light Horse Harry Lee. They carried the day against Patrick Henry and George Mason, as
leading opponents of the proposition.

The convention scarcely had begun before Henry established the broad spread of argument. He did not propose
to abide by any parliamentary decision to debate one clause at a time. Before the convention in Philadelphia the
previous summer, said Henry, a general peace and a universal tranquility had prevailed. Now he was “extremely
uneasy at the proposed change of government.” He swept the room with a cold eye: “Be extremely cautious,
watchful, jealous of your liberty. Instead of securing your rights, you may lose them forever.”(40)

George Mason came to his side. He charged that the new Constitution would create “a national government, and
no longer a Confederation.” He especially denounced the authority proposed in the general government to levy
direct taxes. This power, being at the discretion of Congress and unconfined, “and without any kind of control,
must carry everything before it.” The idea of a consolidated government, he said, “is totally subversive of every
principle which has hitherto governed us. This power is calculated to annihilate totally the State governments. . .
. These two concurrent powers cannot exist long together; the one will destroy the other; the general
government, being paramount to and in every respect more powerful than the State governments, the latter must
give way to the former.”(41)

Then Mason voiced the argument that is as applicable in the mid-twentieth century as it was toward the end of
the eighteenth:

Is it to be supposed that one national government will suit so extensive a country, embracing so many climates,
and containing inhabitants so very different in manners, habits, and customs? It is ascertained, by history, that
there never was a government over a very extensive country without destroying the liberties of the people. . . .
Popular governments can only exist in small territories.(42)

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On Thursday, June 5, Pendleton undertook to respond to Henry and to Mason. Was the proposed government,
he inquired, truly a consolidated government? Of course not. “If this be such a government, I will confess, with
my worthy friend, that it is inadmissable. . . .” The proposed Federal government, he said, “extends to the
general purposes of the Union. It does not intermeddle with the local, particular affairs of the States. . . . It is the
interest of the Federal to preserve the State governments; upon the latter the existence of the former depends. . . .
I wonder how any gentleman, reflecting on the subject, could have conceived an idea of the possibility of the
latter. . . .”(43)

Henry conceived it. He conceived it very clearly. The proposed Constitution, he felt, was “extremely pernicious,
impolitic and dangerous.” He saw no jeopardy to the people in the Articles of Confederation; he saw great
jeopardy in this new Constitution. And he had this to say:

We are descended from a people whose government was founded on liberty: Our glorious forefathers of Great
Britain made liberty the foundation of every thing. That country is become a great, mighty and splendid nation;
not because their government is strong and energetic, but, sir, because liberty is its direct end and foundation.
We drew the spirit of liberty from our British ancestors: By that spirit we have triumphed over every difficulty.
But now, sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this
country into a powerful and mighty empire. If you make the citizens of this country agree to become the subjects
of one great consolidated empire of America, your government will not have sufficient energy to keep them
together. Such a government is incompatible with the genius of Republicanism.(44)

And note this prophetic observation:

There will be no checks, no real balances, in this government. What can avail your specious, imaginary
balances, your rope-dancing, chain-rattling, ridiculous ideal checks and contrivances?

What indeed? What have these ideal checks and balances availed the States in the twentieth century? Henry saw
the empty prospect: “This Constitution is said to have beautiful features; but when I come to examine these
features, sir, they appear to me horribly frightful. Among other deformities, it has an awful squinting; it squints
toward monarchy; and does not this raise indignation in the breast of every true American?”

It was monarchy, per se, that Henry foresaw. And it was despotism at the hands of a general government that he
feared.

“What are your checks in this government?” he kept asking.

No one ever answered him accurately, though half a dozen members of the convention undertook to refute
Henry and to allay his apprehensions. Randolph, replying to the objection that the country soon would be too
large for effective government from the capital, commented that “no extent on earth seems to me too great,” but
he added, “provided the laws be wisely made and executed.” It has proved to be a large qualification.

Madison also responded to Henry’s general objection that the liberty of the people was in danger: “Since the
general civilization of mankind,” he said, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom
of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden
usurpations.”(45)

Follow closely what Madison had to say next. He is expounding the relationship of the State and Federal
governments as he, above all men, understood it:

Give me leave to say something of the nature of the government. . . . There are a number of opinions; but the
principal question is, whether it be a federal or consolidated government. In order to judge properly of the

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question before us, we must consider it minutely in its principal parts. I conceive myself that it is of a mixed
nature; it is in a manner unprecedented; we cannot find one express example in the experience of the world. It
stands by itself. In some respects it is a government of a federal nature; in others it is of a consolidated nature. . .
. Who are parties to it?

Note this, especially; it was quoted earlier but it bears repetition:

The people — but not the people as composing one great body; but the people as composing thirteen
sovereignties.(46)

Francis Corbin, one of the ablest political students of his time, then joined Madison in soothing the growing fear
that the Federal government might one day absorb the State governments. “The powers of the general
government,” he said, “are only of a general nature, and their object is to protect, defend, and strengthen the
United States; but the internal administration of government is left to the State legislatures, who exclusively
retain such powers as will give the States the advantages of small republics, without the danger commonly
attendant on the weakness of such governments.”(47)

Henry, undaunted, straightened his red wig and returned to the debate. “That government is no more than a
choice among evils,” he remarked, “is acknowledged by the most intelligent among mankind, and has been a
standing maxim for ages.” He could not accept the idea that this new government would be “a mighty benefit to
us.”

Sir, I am made of so incredulous materials, that assertions and declarations do not satisfy me. I must be
convinced, sir. I shall retain my infidelity on that subject till I see our liberties secured in a manner perfectly
satisfactory to my understanding.(48)

This exchange occurred on Friday, June 16. The following Monday, Henry renewed his assault:

A number of characters, of the greatest eminence in this country, object to this government for its consolidating
tendency. This is not imaginary. It is a formidable reality. If consolidation proves to be as mischievous to this
country as it has been to other countries, what will the poor inhabitants of this country do? This government will
operate like an ambuscade. It will destroy the State governments, and swallow the liberties of the people,
without giving previous notice.(49)

Madison came back with fresh replies and new remonstrances. The States were safely protected, he assured the
Virginia convention. And renewing the arguments he had advanced in the Federalist, “There will be an
irresistible bias toward the State governments.” It was utterly improbable—almost impossible—that the Federal
government ever would encroach upon the States.

The means of influence consist in having the disposal of gifts and emoluments, and in the number of persons
employed by and dependent upon a government. Will any gentleman compare the number of persons which will
be employed in the general government with the number of those which will be in the State governments? The
number of dependents upon the State governments will be infinitely greater than those on the general
government. I may say, with truth, that there never was a more economical government in any age or country,
nor which will require fewer hands, or give less influence.(50)

Pendleton again gained the floor to tackle Henry’s objection. We are told, he said,

that there will be a war between the two bodies equally our representatives, and that the State government will
be destroyed, and consolidated into the general government. I stated before, that this could not be so. The two
governments act in different manners, and for different purposes—the general government in great national

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concerns, in which we are interested in common with other members of the Union; the State legislature in our
mere local concerns. . . . Our dearest rights—life, liberty and property—as Virginians, are still in the hands of
our State legislature. . . .(51)

Patrick Henry remained unconvinced. His opinion and Madison’s were “diametrically opposite.” The mild-
mannered Madison said the States would prevail. Henry, a dramatic and eloquent speaker, feared the Federal
government would prevail. Bring forth the Federal allurements, he cried,

and compare them with the poor, contemptible things that the State Legislatures can bring forth. . . . There are
rich, fat, Federal emoluments. Your rich, smug, fine, fat, Federal officers—the number of collectors of taxes and
excises—will outnumber anything from the States. Who can cope with the excise man and the taxmen?(52)

Henry did not imagine that the dual governments could be kept each within its proper orbit. “I assert that there is
danger of interference,” he remarked, “because no line is drawn between the powers of the two governments, in
many instances; and where there is a line, there is no check to prevent the one from encroaching upon the
powers of the other. I therefore contend that they must interfere, and that this interference must subvert the State
government as being less powerful. Unless your government have checks, it must inevitably terminate in the
destruction of your privileges.”

William Grayson, burly veteran of the Revolution, was another member of the Virginia convention who clearly
perceived the absence of effective checks and balances. “Power ought to have such checks and limitations,” he
said, “as to prevent bad men from abusing it. It ought to be granted on a supposition that men will be bad; for it
may be eventually so.”(53)

Grayson was here discussing his apprehensions toward the powers vested by Article III in the Supreme Court of
the United States. “This court,” he protested, “has more power than any court under heaven.” The court’s
appellate jurisdiction, especially, aroused his alarm: “What has it in view, unless to subvert the State
governments?”

But Grayson was not alone in foreseeing the possibilities of judicial corruption of the Constitution. Even so stout
an advocate of ratification as Governor Randolph admitted strong doubts and reservations. The court’s
jurisdiction was to extend to “all cases in law and equity . . . arising under the Constitution.” What did the
phrase relate to?

I conceive this to be very ambiguous. If my interpretation be right, the word “arising” will be carried so far that
it will be made use of to aid and extend the Federal jurisdiction.

Grayson agreed: “The jurisdiction of all cases arising under the Constitution and the laws of the Union is of
stupendous magnitude. It is impossible for human nature to trace its extent. It is so vaguely and indefinitely
expressed that its latitude cannot be ascertained.”(54)

True, said Mason: The court’s jurisdiction “may be said to be unlimited.” He was profoundly disturbed by the
prospect. The greater part of the powers given to the court, he felt, “are unnecessary, and dangerous, as tending
to impair, and ultimately destroy the State judiciaries, and, by the same principle, the legislation of the State
governments.” Indeed, the court was “so constructed as to destroy the dearest rights of the community.” Nothing
would be left to the State courts: “Will any gentleman be pleased, candidly, fairly, and without sophistry, to
show us what remains?”

He continued his criticism of the court’s jurisdiction:

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There is no limitation. It goes to everything. . . . All the laws of the United States are paramount to the laws and
Constitution of any single State. “The judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under this
Constitution.” What objects will not this expression extend to? . . . When we consider the nature of these courts,
we must conclude that their effect and operation will be utterly to destroy the State governments; for they will
be the judges how far their laws will operate. . . . To what disgraceful and dangerous length does the principle of
this go! . . . The principle itself goes to the destruction of the legislation of the States, whether or not it was
intended. . . . I think it will destroy the State governments. . . . There are many gentlemen in the United States
who think it right that we should have one great, national, consolidated government, and that it was better to
bring it about slowly and imperceptibly rather than all at once. This is no reflection on any man, for I mean
none. To those who think that one national, consolidated government is best for America, this extensive judicial
authority will be agreeable; but I hope there are many in this convention of a different opinion, and who see
their political happiness resting on their State governments.(55)

It was John Marshall, who fifteen years later would do so much to justify Mason’s apprehensions, who
undertook to allay his fears now. The Federal government, he insisted, certainly would not have the power “to
make laws on every subject.” Could members of the Congress make laws affecting the transfer of property, or
contracts, or claims, between citizens of the same State?

Can they go beyond the delegated powers? If they were to make a law not warranted by any of the powers
enumerated, it would be considered by the judges as an infringement of the Constitution which they are to
guard. They would not consider such a law as coming under their jurisdiction. They would declare it void.(56)

Marshall saw no danger to the States from decrees of the Supreme Court: “I hope that no gentleman will think
that a State will be called at the bar of the Federal court. . . . It is not rational to suppose that the sovereign power
should be dragged before a court.”(57)

Madison, Monroe, and others joined Marshall in defending the Third Article. Their debate was long and
detailed. Much of it was concerned with questions of pleading and practice. But after several days, they went on
to other aspects of the Constitution: The prospect of judicial despotism was recognized by the few, and denied
by the many.

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 7
The States Ratify
IN THE END, Virginia ratified. It was a close vote. A motion to postpone ratification until amendments, in the
nature of a bill of rights, could be considered by “the other States in the American confederacy,” failed by 88 to
80. Then the main question was put, and this was what Virginia agreed to. It merits careful reading:

We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, . . . having fully and freely investigated and discussed the
proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being prepared, as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled
us, to decide thereon, Do, in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the
powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, be resumed by them
whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power, not granted thereby,
remains with them, and at their will; that, therefore, no right, of any denomination, can be cancelled, abridged,
restrained, or modified, by the Congress, by the Senate or House of Representatives, acting in any capacity, by
the President, or any department or officer of the United States, except in those instances in which power is
given by the Constitution for those purposes; and that, among other essential rights, the liberty of conscience
and of the press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified, by any authority of the United States. . . .

The vote on that main question was 89 to 79, but even that narrow margin of approval was predicated upon a
gentlemen’s agreement that the Virginia Convention would recommend a number of amendments, in the form of
a Bill of Rights, to be presented to the first Congress. And the first of these recommended amendments reads:
“That each State in the Union shall respectively retain every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this
Constitution delegated to the Congress of the United States, or to the departments of the Federal government.”

By the time Virginia completed ratification, of course, her decision no longer carried compelling importance.
The Virginia convention had opened on June 2, not quite two weeks after South Carolina, on May 23, had
become the eighth State to ratify. But while the Virginians were debating the issue, New Hampshire, on June 21,
had become Number Nine: The new Union had been formed, and the Constitution had become binding upon the
nine States “ratifying the same.” It has ever been Virginia’s fate to make the right decisions, but to put off
making them as long as possible.

In this consideration of State and Federal relationships, there is something to be learned from the other
resolutions of ratification. The easy ones came first: Delaware came first, on December 7, 1787, “fully, freely
and entirely” approving and assenting to the Constitution; and then, in quick succession, Pennsylvania on
December 12, after a bitter fight; New Jersey on December 18, and Georgia—Georgians had not even read the
Constitution—on January 2, 1788.(58) Connecticut followed a week later, with a comfortable vote of 128 to 40.

Then a month’s hiatus set in. Massachusetts did not become Number Six until February 7, and her approval of
this “explicit and solemn Compact” was not unqualified:

It is the opinion of this convention that certain amendments and alterations in the said Constitution would
remove the fears and quiet the apprehensions of many of the good people of this Commonwealth, and more
effectually guard against an undue administration of the Federal government.(59)

It will come as no surprise that the very first amendment recommended by Massachusetts was “that it be
explicitly declared that all Powers not expressly delegated by the aforesaid Constitution are reserved to the
several States to be by them exercised.”

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Two months later, on April 28, Maryland ratified. Then there was another lapse of nearly a month before South
Carolina, on May 23, became Number Eight. South Carolina accompanied her resolution of ratification with a
pointed statement that she considered it essential “to the preservation of the rights reserved to the several States”
and for the freedom of the people, that the State’s right to prescribe the manner, time, and places of
Congressional elections “be forever inseparably annexed to the sovereignty of the several States.” Then South
Carolina added:

This Convention doth also declare that no Section or paragraph of the said Constitution warrants a Construction
that the States do not retain every power not expressly relinquished by them and vested in the General
Government of the Union.(60)

New Hampshire, in voting its approval on June 21, closely paralleled the action of Massachusetts, but New
Hampshire’s declaration as to reserved powers was even more explicit. The people of New Hampshire wanted it
understood that all powers not “expressly and particularly delegated” were reserved.

So, too, with New York, which became Number Eleven on July 26. The convention at Poughkeepsie wished to
make it known:

That every Power, Jurisdiction, and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress
of the United States, or the departments of the Government thereof, remains to the People of the several States,
or to their respective State Governments to whom they may have granted the same; And that those Clauses in
the said Constitution, which declare, that Congress shall not have or exercise certain Powers, do not imply that
Congress is entitled to any Powers not given by the said Constitution; but such Clauses are to be construed
either as exceptions to certain specified Powers, or as inserted merely for greater Caution.(61)

Interestingly enough, New York’s convention also wanted certain things made known about the Supreme Court
of the United States, to wit,

That the Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States, or of any other Court to be instituted by the
Congress, is not in any case to be encreased enlarged or extended by any Fiction Collusion or mere
suggestion;—And That no Treaty is to be construed as to alter the Constitution of any State.(62)

With New York’s ratification, a quite extended period of inaction began. It was not until November 21, 1789,
nearly a year and a half later, that North Carolina became Number Twelve in the Union. And North Carolina, for
her part, inserted a declaration:

That each State in the Union shall, respectively, retain every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by this
Constitution delegated to the Congress of the United States or to the departments of the Federal government.(63)

Finally, after another lapse of half a year, Rhode Island completed the chain of member States. On May
29,1790, Rhode Island, with great caution and reluctance, joined the Union. The margin of ratification, we have
noted, was a bare 34 to 32. Clearly, the necessary votes would not have been obtained if the resolution of
approval had not included eighteen detailed paragraphs of understandings, plus no fewer than twenty-one
proposed amendments. The third of these “impressions” declared:

That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their
happiness:—That the rights of the States respectively, to nominate and appoint all State Officers, and every
other power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the
United States or to the departments of government thereof, remain to the people of the several States, or their
respective State governments to whom they may have granted the same. . . .(64)

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And the very first of Rhode Island’s recommended amendments proposed that:

The United States shall guarantee to each State its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power,
jurisdiction and right, which is not by this Constitution expressly delegated to the United States.(65)

All these various recommendations as to Constitutional amendment were grouped together by the First Congress
in a resolution on March 4, 1789, submitting what is now the Bill of Rights to the member States. Twelve
proposals in all were offered. Numbers One and Two failed of ratification; the first would have fixed
representation in the House according to a precise guarantee by population; the second would have provided that
no law changing the salaries of Congressmen could take effect “until an election of Representatives shall have
intervened.” The remaining ten amendments won a sufficient number of States; and the tenth of these, as it is
now embedded in our Constitution, forever proclaims that:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved
to the States respectively, or to the people.

In recent years, the Supreme Court of the United States has undertaken to repeal the Tenth Amendment by
treating it as a meaningless appendage to the Constitution—mere surplusage, a tautological expression of self-
evident facts. The Tenth Amendment “added nothing to the instrument as originally ratified,” said the Supreme
Court in 1931.(66) The Amendment “states but a truism,” added Chief Justice Stone ten years later.(67) But the
overwhelming preponderance of evidence proves that when the Tenth Amendment was nailed into the
Constitution, the ratifying States regarded this statement of reserved powers as a vital, indeed an absolutely
necessary addition to the Constitution.

The Supreme Court, it may be suggested, has no authority to repeal any provision of the Constitution. Mr.
Justice Frankfurter, no less, is a recent authority on the point: “Nothing new can be put into the Constitution
except through the amendatory process,” he said recently for the court. “Nothing old can be taken out without
the same process.”(68) And so long as the Tenth Amendment remains a part of the Constitution, it is elementary
that it must be given full meaning—that the intention of its framers must be acknowledged and respected.
Plainly, the intention of the Tenth Amendment was to restrict the Federal government—to hold it within the
strict boundaries of the delegated powers. To be sure, John Marshall, not long after the Union was formed, was
to seize upon the fact that the restriction went only to the “powers not delegated,” and not to the “powers not
expressly delegated,” as if this made some large difference. But by that time Marshall was at the helm, and the
powers of the States already were being eaten away by slow judicial erosion. The process continues, at an
accelerated pace, to this day.

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 Part 2
The Right to Interpose
1. A Cast of Characters
2. The Chisholm Case
3. Debt Assumption
4. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
5. Mr. Madison's Report of 1799

. . . this Assembly doth explicitly and

peremptorily declare that it views the powers of
the federal government as resulting from the
compact, to which the States are parties, as
limited by the plain sense and intention of the
instrument constituting that compact; as no
further valid than they are authorized by the
grants enumerated in that compact; and that in
case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous
exercise of other powers not granted by the said
compact, the States who are parties thereto, have
the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for
arresting the progress of the evil, and for
maintaining, within their respective limits, the
authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to
them. . . .

The Virginia Resolution

December 21, 1798

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 1
A Cast of Characters
WE HAVE come this far in the argument: First, that the political entities created with the Declaration of
Independence were free and independent States, even as the instrument proclaimed them to be; second, that the
States asserted for themselves the powers of sovereignty, and exercised those powers for more than a decade
thereafter; third, that it was the States, as States, which formed the new Union of 1788; fourth, that in binding
themselves to the Constitution the States delegated—not surrendered, but delegated—only certain of their
powers, retaining all others to themselves.

It was foreseen, we have noted, that conflicts would arise between the States and the Federal government which
the States jointly had created, but the extent of these conflicts was minimized. It was assumed by those whose
views prevailed—by Hamilton, Marshall, Madison, Pendleton, and Washington—that the State and Federal
governments would confine their activities each to its allotted realm of authority. No one dreamed, then, of a
massive Federal government, extending its authority into every phase of personal and public affairs; the
functions of the Federal government, it was said, would be few and limited—those of the States, many and
indefinite.

More mistaken prophecy never was made by men of vision. The Union barely had become complete, with
Rhode Island’s long-delayed ratification, before the States were shocked by a decision of the Supreme Court
which challenged their sovereign authority and violated a clear Constitutional understanding. This was, of
course, the Chisholm case. It marked the first major conflict in the continuing struggle of the States to preserve
their rightful powers. It is here that a brief account of that struggle must begin.

First, let a stage be set. Time, 1790. It is a turbulent, tumultuous, exciting year. The assault upon the Bastille had
come the preceding summer, only four months after Washington’s inauguration in March. Now, in 1790, Louis
XVI and Marie Antoinette have but three years left to them. Napoleon is twenty-one, a junior lieutenant in the
artillery; his time is still ahead. In Prussia, Frederick II reigns; in England, George III is still on the throne. This
was the year that Papa Joseph Haydn, passing through Bonn, heard a mass by a stormy, violent young man of
twenty, and arranged to have young Beethoven come to Vienna to study under him. Mozart in 1790, ill and
poverty-stricken, is thirty-four, at work on The Magic Flute, with Don Giovanni behind him; his brief candle is
almost out. Wordsworth is twenty, Coleridge eighteen, Jane Austen a solemn little girl of fifteen.

In the United States, there is not much concern for the finer arts, though the new Republic boasts twenty-four
colleges or universities, nine of them created in the preceding ten years. The country is too new, too raw, the
hazards of the expanding frontier too much a reality. Linking the States—perhaps “linking” is too strong a
word—is a primitive network of post roads and trails. One stage a day serves Boston and New York.(1) Of the
3,929,000 inhabitants enrolled in the census of 1790, all but 201,000 live in rural areas; and while
communications are improving beyond the miserable level of the Revolution, news still filters with great
slowness to remote places.

What is the news that carries the most absorbing meaning? Politics. Government. The novelty, and the passion,
of a new union. “Never in American annals,” Charles Warren once observed, “has there been a period when
men ‘took their politics so hard’ as in the twenty-five years between the framing of the Constitution and the end
of the War of 1812.”(2)

They are hard men: Washington, loved but enigmatic, rides at the crest of his popularity; the bitterness of his
last years has not begun. That thin-skinned and well-stuffed Federalist, John Adams, presides over the Senate. In

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Massachusetts, the pugnacious diarist of Dedham, Nathaniel Ames, is warring with his brilliant Federalist
brother, Fisher. The Spring of 1790 brings the death of Benjamin Franklin, an old man, much honored—but we
forget how young so many of the founding fathers were: Jefferson is forty-seven in 1790; Madison thirty-nine,
John Marshall thirty-five, Hamilton only thirty-three. In Virginia, Spencer Roane, one of the most neglected
jurists of our history, is twenty-eight. John Taylor of Caroline, farmer, soldier, profound political thinker, is
thirty-seven.

Some of the players in the developing drama are not yet born—Upshur and Hayne will not appear until 1791—
and some are only boys: Henry Clay in Virginia; Wilson Lumpkin in Georgia; John Randolph, a precocious
seventeen, impatiently learning law and politics. And far apart, as the last decade of the 18th century opens, are
two eight-year-olds: In New England, Daniel Webster; and in up-country South Carolina, a slender, dark-eyed,
brooding boy, John C. Calhoun.

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 2
The Chisholm Case
IT WILL be recalled that Section 2 of Article III of the Constitution extended the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction
to “controversies . . . between a State and Citizens of another State.” There was no question that a State could
bring such an action. Georgia, in 1792, had brought an action against one Brailsford, a British subject, to
confiscate payment of a debt that was owed him.(3) But it was equally clear, or so the States thought, that no
citizen could sue a State without the State’s consent. Hamilton, among other advocates of the Constitution, had
declared this immunity to be “inherent in the nature of sovereignty.”(4)

In the autumn of 1792, in Virginia, came rumblings of a storm ahead. Suit was filed in the Supreme Court of the
United States against the Commonwealth of Virginia by the Indiana Company, seeking clear title to certain
lands “between the Alleghany mountains and the river Ohio, above the mouth of the Little Kanawha Creek.”
The company contended that it held valid title as the result of a deed, in 1768, from the Six United Nations of
Indians.

But Virginia did not agree to this at all. Thirteen years earlier, on June 12, 1779, the Virginia General Assembly
had disposed of the claim: “All deeds which have been or shall be made,” said the Assembly at the time, “by
any Indians, or by any Indian nation or nations, for lands within the limits of the charter and territory of Virginia
. . . to or for the use or benefit of any private person or persons, shall be, and the same are hereby declared
utterly void, and of no effect.”

Yet here, in a new Union, before a new court, was the Indiana Company again reviving its claim. On December
18, 1792, the Virginia Assembly adopted a brief resolution. Because it marks a significant step in the beginnings
of State interposition, it merits quotation substantially in full. The resolution first recalled the Assembly’s action
of 1779, and continued:

From the foregoing resolutions it appears, that the claim of the Indiana Company, has been already decided on
by the legislature of this Commonwealth: Your committee are therefore of opinion, that such decision having
been made previous to the adoption of the present Constitution, and under the former instrument of
confederation (which expressly guaranteed perfect and unimpaired sovereignty as to all matters of internal
government to all the States leagued under it) cannot be again called in question, before any other tribunal than
the General Assembly of this Commonwealth, without a dangerous and unconstitutional assumption of power,
which, if exercised, would give birth to a series of pernicious and disgraceful consequences, the extent and
duration of which it is hardly possible to measure or calculate.

Resolved therefore, That the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States, does not and cannot extend
to this case, it having been already decided on before a tribunal fully competent to its decision.

Resolved, That the State cannot be made a defendant in the said court, at the suit of any individual or
individuals.

Resolved, That the executive be requested, to pursue such measures in this case, as may to them seem most
conducive to the interest, honor and dignity of this Commonwealth.(5)

Look back at that language for a moment. Here, in 1792, was Virginia saying bluntly that the court’s jurisdiction
“does not and cannot extend” to a certain case, and further, that Virginia “cannot be made a defendant in the said
court.” Here was Virginia instructing her Governor to take “such measures” as he deemed conducive with the

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“interest, honor and dignity” of the State. One hundred and sixty-four years later, it will be seen, Virginia was to
echo the language.

Before the Indiana Company could perfect its suit against Virginia, however, Alexander Chisholm of South
Carolina, in the fall of 1792 filed suit in the Supreme Court against the State of Georgia. Chisholm appeared as
executor of one Robert Farquhar, seeking recovery of property confiscated during the Revolution. Chisholm
appeared, but Georgia did not.

On December 14, 1792, a resolution was offered in the Georgia House of Representatives declaring that for the
State of Georgia to respond to Chisholm’s petition would not only involve the States in numberless law-suits.
Acquiescence before the Court, it was said, also

would effectually destroy the retained sovereignty of the States, and would actually tend in its operation to
annihilate the very shadow of State government, and to render them but tributary corporations to the government
of the United States.(6)

Therefore, Georgia would not appear. Georgia would not be bound by the court’s decree, whatever it might be.
The Court was acting in a fashion “unconstitutional and extra-judicial.”

But the case came on to be heard the following February, and on February 18, 1793, in one of the milestone
decisions of the Court, Pennsylvania’s James Wilson had this to say:

This is a case of uncommon magnitude. One of the parties to it is a STATE; certainly respectable, claiming to be
sovereign. The question to be determined is, whether this State, so respectable, and whose claim soars so high, is
amenable to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States? This question, important in itself, will
depend on others, more important still; and may, perhaps, be ultimately resolved into one, no less radical than
this—”do the people of the United States form a NATION”(7)

To the majority of the Court, there was no question of this. A nation had in fact been formed by “the People of
the United States,” among whom were the people of Georgia. And in this nation, judicial authority over all
things, over even the State of Georgia, had been vested in the high Court. That had been the will of the people of
Georgia. They had joined others in forming themselves “into a nation for national purposes.” They had
instituted, for such purposes, “a national government, complete in all its parts, with powers legislative, executive
and judiciary; and in all those powers extending over the whole nation.” No person, said Wilson, and no State,
could claim exemption from the jurisdiction of the national government. And as for the action brought by
Farquhar’s executors? The action was validly filed.

It was a 4-1 decision by the Court, with Iredell dissenting. The Court ordered the plaintiff’s suit to be served on
the Governor of Georgia, and commanded the State to appear or suffer judgment in default. From argument to
opinion, the whole thing had taken but fourteen days.

A sense of profound shock swept the country. Massachusetts adopted a resolution denouncing the court’s
opinion. Virginia’s Assembly declared:

That a State cannot under the Constitution of the United States, be made a defendant at the suit of any individual
or individuals, and that the decision of the supreme Federal court, that a State may be placed in that situation, is
incompatible with, and dangerous to the sovereignty and independence of the individual States, as the same
tends to a general consolidation of these confederated republics.

The outrage in Georgia can be well imagined. Wilson’s opinion had come down in mid-February; the Georgia
Legislature did not convene until the following November, but nine months provided no cooling-off period.

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Governor Edward Telfair advised the Legislature that he had refused to make an appearance, despite a process
served upon him, because “this would have introduced a precedent replete with danger to the Republic, and
would have involved this State in complicated difficulties abstracted from the infractions it would have made on
her retained sovereignty.”(8) On November 21, the Georgia House of Representatives passed a bill providing
that any Federal marshal who attempted to levy upon the property of Georgia in executing the court’s order
“shall be . . . guilty of felony, and shall suffer death, without the benefit of clergy, by being hanged.”(9)

Let us take careful note of what happened next. The Court had said one thing—that it had power to hear this suit
against Georgia. And Georgia, interposing, had said another thing—that the Court had no such authority. How
was this question of contested power to be resolved? Who was right, Georgia or the Court?

The issue went to the States themselves. On February 19, 1793, the day after the Court’s opinion came down, a
resolution was offered in Congress proposing an amendment to the Constitution. In January of 1794, this
resolution was put in final form and in March it was submitted to the States. New Jersey and Pennsylvania, in
effect, voted for the Court: they refused to ratify. But New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, Vermont (which had joined the Union in March of 1791), Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland,
Delaware, North Carolina—and of course, Georgia—held that the Court was wrong. They ratified what is now
the Eleventh Amendment. They declared that:

The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity commenced
or prosecuted against one of the United States, by citizens of another State, or by citizens or subjects of any
foreign state.

The necessary number of ratifications could be counted by February of 1795, but the amendment was not
formally proclaimed a part of the Constitution until 1798. What is important to note, in this regard, is that
Georgia totally defied the Court from the very inception of the suit in 1792. Georgia defied the Court, and
Georgia remained in the Union. There was no violence, no secession, no anarchy. There was simply a question
of contested power, submitted to the States for decision. And when they had decided it, that was the end of it.
The Court in 1798 struck the Chisholm case from its calendar, and with it went all other suits against States
commenced prior to the effective date of the Eleventh Amendment.(10)

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 3
Debt Assumption
NOW, Georgia's drastic action in the Chisholm case was not the only instance of State interposition in the first
half-dozen years of the republic; it was only the most spectacular, and the most decisive. It is the best place to
begin.

Actually, however, the controversy over suits against a State was antedated by a warm dispute over Federal
resumption of debts incurred by the individual States during the Revolutionary War. In Virginia, the people “by
persevering and strenuous exertions” had redeemed a considerable portion of their debts through the collection
of heavy taxes imposed by the Virginia Assembly. They could look forward to “the most certain prospect of
extinguishing the whole at a period not very distant,” and they were entirely unwilling to tax themselves further
for the payment of debts contracted by other States “which either have not paid any part thereof themselves, or
have reduced them but in a small proportion compared with the payments made by this State.” When Congress
approved an act providing for assumption of all State debts, Virginia vigorously objected; and her resolutions of
November 3 and 4, 1790, provide what are perhaps the earliest instances of State protest against Federal action.
The first of these resolved

That so much of the act intitled “An act making provision for the debt of the United States,” as assumes the
payment of the State debts is repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, as it goes to the exercise of a
power not granted to the general government.

The second, on the following day, declared that the debt assumption act

is dangerous to the rights and subversive of the interest of the people, and demands the marked disapprobation
of the General Assembly.

Again, on December 16, 1790, the Virginia Assembly continued its objections against an act that was warranted
by “neither policy, justice, nor the Constitution.” The assumption act gave preference to holders of the principal
of the continental debt, over the holders of the principal of the State debts, which seemed to the Virginia
Assembly unfair and discriminatory. But the Assembly then turned away “from the impolicy and injustice of the
act,” in order to view the law in another light “in which . . . it appears still more odious and deformed.”

During the whole discussion of the Federal Constitution by the convention of Virginia, your memorialists were
taught to believe “that every power not granted, was retained.” Under this impression and upon this positive
condition, declared in the instrument of ratification, the said government was adopted by the people of this
Commonwealth; but your memorialists can find no clause in the Constitution, authorizing Congress to assume
the debts of the States! As the guardians then of the rights and interests of their constituents, as sentinels placed
by them over the ministers of the Federal Government, to shield it from their encroachments, or at least to sound
the alarm when it is threatened with invasion, they can never reconcile it to their consciences, silently to
acquiesce in a measure which violates that hallowed maxim: A maxim on the truth and sacredness of which the
Federal Government depended for its adoption in this Commonwealth.(11)

May it be suggested, in passing, that the high duty of State legislators, thus defined by Virginia in 1790, merits
revival in our own time? The members of State legislatures could perform a service of immense value by
serving today “as sentinels placed by [their constituents] over the ministers of the Federal Government,” to
shield the people’s freedom from Federal encroachments “or at least to sound the alarm when it is threatened
with invasion.” It is a pity to reflect that this obligation of State legislatures, as conceived by the Virginia

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Assemblymen of 1790, has been so neglected. Our sentinels have slept; and the few alarms they have sounded in
recent years have come too late.

Two other instances of State interposition in this period may be noted.

One occurred late in 1790, in North Carolina, when a Federal circuit court attempted, by writ of certiorari, to
transfer a case to its jurisdiction from the Supreme Court of North Carolina. The State judges, said Nathaniel
Macon later, simply refused to obey the Federal command, and the marshal found himself unable to execute the
order. North Carolina’s General Assembly warmly approved the State judges’ resistance.(12)

A second chapter of interposition against Federal courts was written in New Hampshire in 1793 and 1794. Here
the grievance dated from the capture of the brig Susannah by the privateer McClary in October of 1777. The
McClary was owned and manned by citizens of New Hampshire, but was acting under a commission of the
Continental Congress. New Hampshire’s courts condemned the Susannah as a lawful prize, and in the view of
New Hampshire, that ended the matter: No appeal was permitted, by State laws, to the Congress. However,
objectors did appeal, and in September, 1783, the newly created Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture undertook
to reverse the Supreme Court of New Hampshire. But New Hampshire paid no attention to this edict, and there
the matter rested until the new Union was formed in 1788, and the new Federal courts came into being.

Then, to the amazement and chagrin of the people of New Hampshire, the principal petitioner, Elisha Doane,
successfully revived an action in 1793 which they thought had been disposed of in 1778—before there had been
Articles of Confederation, let alone a Constitution for the United States. On February 20, 1794, the New
Hampshire Legislature warmly protested that the action was

unsettling all the proceedings of the State governments prior to the existence of the Constitution; and will
inevitably involve the States, and this State in particular, in confusion, and will weaken, if not perhaps destroy,
the National Government.(13)

When this accomplished nothing, the New Hampshire Legislature, in January, 1795, for a second time
remonstrated “against a violation of State independence and an unwarrantable encroachment in the courts of the
United States.”(14)

“Can the rage for annihilating all the power of the States, and reducing this extensive and flourishing country to
one domination, make the administrators blind to the danger of violating all the principles of our former
Government?” asked the Legislature. For their part, the New Hampshiremen well remembered tyranny; they
were aware of the meaning of the Confederation; they would remind Congress that under that Confederation,
State powers not expressly delegated were reserved. What New Hampshire had done prior to formation of the
Union was wholly the business of New Hampshire: Her legislature would not submit laws made before the
Constitution “to the adjudication of any power on earth, while the freedom of the Federal government shall
afford any constitutional means of redress.”

The declaration was in vain. A month later, the Supreme Court handed down a decision upholding the power of
the new Federal courts to carry into effect decrees of the old Prize Court.(15)

It was a bitter dose for the States to swallow. The new Union was scarcely six years old. Yet already a pattern
was taking shape along the lines that Patrick Henry had feared and Pendleton, Marshall, Madison, and Hamilton
had discounted. In the debt assumption act, Congress had taken an action deemed unconstitutional by Virginia.
Federal courts in two States had attempted to arrogate powers unto themselves in orders angrily resented by the
States themselves. Worse still, the Supreme Court of the United States had acted in the Chisholm case in a
manner so palpably unconstitutional that the States had been compelled to amend their fundamental law to
preserve their sovereign power.

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All this was part of the background that figured in events of 1798 and 1799, when the right of the States to
interpose against Federal encroachment took eloquent and emphatic form.

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 4
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
THE EVENTS that were to lead to the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in the winter of 1798 had their
genesis at least five years earlier, and in a sense, twenty years earlier. On the one hand were those patriots,
among them some courageous officers in the Revolution, who maintained a warm affection for England even as
they made war upon the tyranny of George III. On the other were the followers of Jefferson, grateful for the aid
of Lafayette, who viewed the coming French Revolution as a further flowering of the independent man.

This loose division abruptly widened in 1793, with the beheading of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; many a
New Englander, generally indifferent in the cause, suddenly awoke to the excesses of the French Revolution.
Friendly salutations of “Citizen Banker” and “Citizen Farmer” seemed no longer so pleasant. As the conflict
between France and England burst forth with new fury, the political cleavage in the United States widened still
more with Washington’s proclamation of neutrality. This was bitterly received by Republicans, and when Jay’s
Treaty of 1795 was added to it, their resentment knew no bounds. The French also were angered: By 1796, the
number of raids by French corsairs on American shipping had reached a level just short of total humiliation to
the United States. Diplomatic relations between France and the United States, severely strained, reached a
breaking point as Ambassador Pinckney cooled his heels in Paris.

John Adams’ first action, following his inauguration in March of 1797, was to send John Marshall and Elbridge
Gerry to Paris to join Pinckney in negotiations with Talleyrand. The three accomplished no more than the one.
Instead, the Americans were handed a contemptuous proposition: France would negotiate on two conditions—
one, an American loan; and two, a bribe of $250,000 paid to the French Directory. When word of this outrage
finally reached the Capital in March of 1798, Adams hastily asked defense measures of the Congress.
Washington was recalled from Mount Vernon; General Hamilton was told to prepare for the field; an
appropriation was passed to speed construction of three frigates. Congress established a Department of the Navy
and re-established the Marine Corps. In the wave of anti-French sentiment that swept the country, France’s help
in the Revolution was wholly forgotten, and “Jacobins” were denounced at every hand.

The political situation that obtained then, in the spring of 1798, could not occur now: Adams, a stout Federalist,
was President; Jefferson, an ardent Republican, was Vice-President. No ready comparisons come to mind, but it
was almost as if a McKinley were in the White House and a Wilson were presiding over the Senate. When
Jefferson and other Republicans demanded to know the basis on which Adams had requested his defense
measures, the President made public (on April 3, 1798) the dispatches from abroad. The French go-betweens
were identified only as X, Y, and Z. With publication of the insulting offer, a cry arose that has come down in
history: Millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute. In Philadelphia and New York, French sympathizers
were stoned or publicly ridiculed. There began what Jefferson later was to describe as “this reign of witches.”

To say that political partisanship alone prompted the almost incredible events that followed is to oversimplify
the story. The fight between Federalists and Republicans far transcended mere party labels. As James Morton
Smith has emphasized,(16) the times reflected the growing division between the commercial North and the
agrarian South, between creditors and debtors, and most significantly, between different views on the matter of
how, and by whom, government should be administered. Adams and Hamilton saw control of government
slipping from their hands into the hands of a rabble of wild Irishmen, Jacobins, and libertarians. They saw it
happening, and in the fashion of distressed politicians from time immemorial, they undertook to meet the
situation in the only manner that occurred to them: They undertook to pass a law.

Actually, in the period between June 18 and July 14, 1798, they passed four laws. The first of these was a
tightened Naturalization Act, by which an alien’s period of residence, prior to obtaining citizenship, was

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increased from five to fourteen years. The object here was to keep immigrants, and especially the Irish, out of
the Republicans’ clutches. A second law (though it was chronologically the third in the sequence) was an Alien
Enemies Act, a permanent piece of wartime legislation, which was not too bad an enactment.

But on June 25, Adams signed the Alien Friends Act, and on July 14, he signed the Sedition Act.

These last two acts have a nightmare aspect as an American reads them today. It seems impossible that a
Congress ever could have enacted them.

The first of them authorized the President, whenever he wished, “to order all such aliens as he shall judge
dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, or shall have reasonable grounds to suspect are
concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the government thereof, to depart out of the
territory of the United States.” If an alien, placed under such a deportation order, could prove that no injury to
the country would result from allowing him to remain, the President could license the alien to stay—under such
bond as the President deemed proper, and until the bond might be revoked at the President’s decree.

The second of the acts made it a crime, punishable by imprisonment of up to five years, for any persons to
“conspire together” with intent “to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States,
which are or shall be directed by proper authority.” Further,

. . . if any person shall write, print, utter, or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or
published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false,
scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the
Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government,
or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either or any of them, into
contempt or disrepute,

he could be punished by a fine of up to $2,000 or by imprisonment not to exceed two years. The Sedition Act
made it a criminal offense “to excite the hatred of the good people of the United States” against Congress or the
President. Still further, it was made unlawful for anyone to urge opposition or resistance to any law of the
United States or any act of the President, “or to resist, oppose or defeat any such law or act.”

Reasonably minded men might debate the constitutionality of the Alien Friends Act: Under the broad powers of
the Congress to provide for the common defense and the national security, perhaps a case could be made for
vesting such sweeping powers, even in peacetime, in a President—though the case would have to be made at the
sacrifice of every tradition of Anglo-Saxon justice and right conduct.

It seems unbelievable, now, that anyone ever could have sustained the constitutionality of the Sedition Act. Its
whole purpose was to stifle political opposition to Adams and the Federalist administration. The law crashed
headlong into the Constitutional provision that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of
speech or of the press.” Yet the dismal truth is that every leading Federalist of the day approved the act; even
John Marshall, though he thought it “useless,” and “would have voted against it,” never regarded the law as
unconstitutional—indeed, he was to file a minority report in the Virginia General Assembly upholding its
constitutionality. So, too, at least three justices of the Supreme Court—Paterson, Chase, and Bushrod
Washington— repeatedly upheld the act. In time, the legislatures of half a dozen States also were to approve it.

The only virtue of the two acts was to be found in their early expiration dates. The Alien Friends Act was to
expire June 25, 1800. the Sedition Act on the last day of Adams’ term, March 3, 1801. But once they were
passed, the country entered upon a period of persecution, suppression, censorship, and “McCarthyism” such as
the junior Senator from Wisconsin, in our own time, never dreamed of. Mr. McCarthy was a piker. He should

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have known the Hon. Timothy Pickering, Secretary of State, and Mr. Justice Samuel Chase, perhaps the worst
judge who ever sat on the highest court in the land.

The two years that elapsed after adoption of the Sedition Act merit our attention today for two reasons. One is to
put in perspective the “dark night of oppression” that Mr. Elmer Davis is so fond of bewailing these days. The
second is to comprehend the serious nature of the provocation that led to the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions,
and to Madison’s famed Report of 1799.

It would be unthinkable today to suppress a newspaper, to drive it out of existence, or to jail its editor, merely
because the paper opposed acts of the administration in power. When a Senate committee in 1956 undertook
merely to question a few copyreaders of the New York Times, who were suspected—with good reason—of
Communist backgrounds, liberal journals across the country erupted with fulsome laments for freedom of the
press.

Consider for a moment what happened in 1798 and 1799.

A contagion of “anti-Jacobinism,” spread by some shrewd propagandists for the Federalist party, swept the land:
“The eyes of the devouring monster are upon us.”(17) Crowds of young Americans donned the black cockade,
emblem of true Americanism, and roamed the streets of Philadelphia and New York searching for Jacobin
sympathizers. It was the Federalists’ contention that a “French faction” was at work under the sinister direction
of Thomas Jefferson, a disloyal and subversive element engaged in infiltrating government, press, even
textbooks and schools. French tutors were denounced as French spies. The entire Republican party, even then,
was termed the party “of treason.”(18) The only “true Americans” were Adams, Hamilton, and other leaders of
the Federalist party.

The bulk of the press of that day supported the Federalist cause and fed the anti-Jacobin fires. But there were
exceptions. One was Benjamin Bache’s Aurora, in Philadelphia. Bache was a grandson of Benjamin Franklin,
which surely might have provided him respectable auspices, but he was a stinging gadfly with a marvelous gift
for the contemptuous phrase. A virulent, vindictive, scurrilous fellow, only twenty-nine the summer of the
Sedition Act, he first traduced Washington and then turned on “the blind, bald, crippled, toothless, querulous
ADAMS.”

On June 27, 1798, two weeks before the Sedition Act was passed, Bache was arrested on a Federal warrant
charging him with having libeled the President. Before Bache could be brought to trial, however, he died of
yellow fever.

Bache was succeeded on the Aurora the following November by William Duane, another young journalist of
Republican sympathies who also was a master of invective—so remarkable a master, indeed, that scarcely eight
months passed before Pickering was demanding that he be prosecuted for pouring “an uninterrupted stream of
slander on the American Government.”(19) Duane was arrested in July, 1799, charged with seditious libel, and
subjected to more than two years of vengeful harassment by Federalists before they abandoned their persecution.

Another influential editor of the day, who like Duane had an Irish background, was John Daly Burk, of the Time
Piece. He had settled in Boston, then moved on to New York. He wrote, among other things, that John Adams
was responsible for the approaching war with France; that Adams had his heart set on becoming King; that
Adams had deliberately falsified Gerry’s dispatches from France. In a truculent impulse, Burk cried that he
wished the French would come and put “every scoundrel in favor of the [Federalist] government . . . to the
guillotine.” On July 6, 1798, Burk was arrested for seditious libel, and bailed for trial in the autumn. While he
waited trial, his newspaper collapsed.(20)

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There also was Thomas Cooper, an Englishman who came to Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, in 1794,
and in time became editor of the Northumberland Gazette. He, too, ran afoul of Pickering and Adams. On April
9, 1800, he was arrested for seditious libel. On April 24, he was found guilty, fined $400, and sent to prison for
six months.

One of the most active Republican editors of the time was James Thompson Callender, of the Richmond
Examiner. He was a despicable little man, usually filthy, most often dressed in a greasy jacket and a pair of
stained and rumpled pants. One writer has described him as a “brilliant, drunken, fearless, mercenary product of
Grubb Street, whose scurrilous pen was at the service of the highest bidder and whose libels were produced to
order.”(21) Callender had written a book, The Prospect Before Us, and a copy of this polemic, thoughtfully put
in the hands of Justice Chase as he was out riding circuit, was sufficient to send Chase snarling after Callender’s
scalp. Callender’s sin was that he had described Federal judges and ambassadors as “paper jobbers” and
“poltroons.” He had written that Adams “contrived pretenses to double the annual expense of government, by
useless fleets, armies, sinecures and jobs of every possible description.”(22) This was enough for Chase to see to
it that Callender was indicted for sedition as “a person of wicked, depraved, evil-disposed, disquiet and turbulent
mind and disposition,” who falsely and maliciously had designed to defame the President and bring him into
disrepute.

Thus Callender was tried, in the summer of 1800, before a justice of the Supreme Court determined to convict
him at any price. Chase throttled defense counsel, and badgered attorneys until they retired in disgust. When
William Wirt attempted to argue the constitutionality of the Sedition Act, Chase forced him to sit down,
declared that no jury could pass on the point, and bellowed from the bench that to permit a petit jury to pass on
the constitutionality of a law “would be extremely dangerous.” “Hear my words,” cried Chase, “I wish the world
to know them—my opinion is the result of mature reflection.” It was no surprise when Callender was found
guilty, fined $200, and sentenced to nine months in prison.(23)

Bache, Duane, Burk, and Callender were not the only editors persecuted in this period; they were only the most
influential. There was Thomas Adams, of the Independent Chronicle in Boston, who died before he could be
brought to trial. There was Abijah Adams, his brother, sentenced to one month in jail; and Anthony Haswell, of
the Vermont Gazette, a $200 fine and two months in jail; and Charles Holt, of the Bee in New Haven, tried
before Bushrod Washington, six months and $200; and David Frothingham, of the New York Argus, driven to
the wall by Alexander Hamilton, four months and $100.

Nor were editors the only victims. There was a Vermont Congressman, Matthew Lyon, a belligerent fellow who
once tangled with a fellow Congressman on the floor of the House in a fight with canes and fire tongs. Because
of articles he published in the Vermont Journal critical of Adams, Lyon was indicted for sedition, brought to
trial before Paterson, and sentenced to four months in jail. While languishing in his cell at Vergennes, a martyr
to the Republican cause, he proceeded to run for re-election and defeated his opponents by almost two to one.

There were still other prosecutions. In Newark, one July day in 1799, townsfolk turned out for a parade
honoring Adams. As the cannons burst forth in presidential salute, a village drunk, one Luther Baldwin, came
listing toward John Burnet’s saloon. For what reason, inquired this bleary Republican, were the cannons firing?
For Adams, he was told. To this Baldwin replied, perhaps with gestures, that for his own part, he did not care if
the cannon ball went up the President’s arse.(24) For this he was arrested for sedition, tried before Bushrod
Washington and District Judge Robert Morris, found guilty, and fined $150.

There was also a crackerbox radical in Dedham, Massachusetts, David Brown, who made the mistake of
refusing to tell Justice Chase the names of friends and associates who shared his Republican views: He was
fined $450, and sent to jail for eighteen months.

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The list could be much extended throughout the Eastern Seaboard. The whole period from mid-Summer of 1798
to Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801 saw newspapers closed, Republican critics tarred and feathered, opposition
Congressmen abused and vilified. Directing the whole ugly scene were the cool hands of Hamilton and
Pickering. The hostile eyes of Judges Washington and Paterson gazed from the Federal bench, and everywhere
there raged the burly, bustling, pig-eyed figure of Samuel Chase, a tyrant who held in his coarse hands the
meaning of the Constitution.

Jefferson had almost clipped the wings of the Federalists’ Naturalization Law of June 18, 1798. The fourteen-
year requirement passed by one vote only. Presiding over the Senate, however, he was unable to block the Alien
Act of June 25 or the Sedition Act that followed on July 14. Sick at heart, he watched the dominant Federalists
make a mockery of individual liberties and press freedom. Barely ten years after a new Constitution had become
the supreme law of the land, Jefferson witnessed its palpable violation.

He could not remain idle. Six years earlier, Kentucky had come into the Union, but six years had done little to
quiet the frontier spirit of the Kentucky wilderness. In Kentucky was his good friend John Breckinridge, who
had studied law in Charlottesville, served in Congress from Virginia, and then returned to Lexington, to become
first Attorney General of Kentucky and later a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives from Fayette
County. So Jefferson arranged a meeting at Monticello one evening with Breckinridge and his fellow
Kentuckian, Colonel W. C. Nicholas. “Happening to be together,” he was to write Breckinridge’s son in 1821,
they consulted upon the dangers of the Alien and Sedition Acts.(25) “These gentlemen pressed me strongly to
sketch a resolution,” said Jefferson, but it may better be imagined that it was Jefferson himself who tactfully did
the pressing. As Vice-President, he could not participate publicly in the move he had in mind; already, he was
being denounced daily as a traitor and a Jacobin. But enjoining Breckinridge and Nicholas to secrecy, he did in
fact draft a resolution for the Kentucky Assembly, and in early November of 1798, Breckinridge offered it in the
Kentucky House.

Now, the Kentucky Resolution of November 16, 1798, is a fairly long document. It was composed of nine
separate resolves. Numbers Two through Eight related to specific grievances under the Alien and Sedition Acts,
and may be passed over here. But the first and the ninth resolves establish foundation stones for the whole
concept of State sovereignty and States’ rights. This was the first:

I. Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of
unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact under the style and title of a
Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special
purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the residuary mass
of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated
powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.

Let us pause there for a moment. Hamilton is handy authority (though not even the most ardent apostle of
centralized government could deny it), that laws, to be lawful, must have proper weight behind them. “There is
no position which depends on clearer principles,” Hamilton had said, “than that every act of a delegated
authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act,
therefore, contrary to the Constitution [and, it may be interpolated, no judicial decree either] can be valid.” That
is exactly what Jefferson was saying here, in the opening sentence of the Kentucky Resolution, and it is as true
today as it was in 1798. The resolution continued:

That to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the
other party.

And then the essence of the right of interposition:

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That the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the
powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its
powers; but that as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an
equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress. [Emphasis supplied.]

What Jefferson was saying here was that, yes, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land; and, yes, the
Constitution is superior to anything in the laws and Constitutions of the States. But one ultimate power remains,
superior to the instrument itself—the power that created the instrument, that made it and can unmake it, the
power of the sovereign States themselves. By any other line of reasoning, a Frankenstein creature must be
accepted, a creature more powerful than its creator—a general government with power to make “its discretion,
and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.”

Kentucky’s final resolve in 1798 began with a declaration of affection for the Union and faithfulness to “the
plain intent and meaning” of the Constitution. But Kentucky profoundly believed

that to take from the States all the powers of self-government, and transfer them to a general and consolidated
Government, without regard to the special delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to in that compact, is
not for the peace, happiness, or prosperity of these States.

Then the resolve continued on a stronger and more ominous theme:

. . . Therefore, this Commonwealth is determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, tamely to submit to
undelegated and consequently unlimited powers in no man or body of men on earth.

What were the “unlimited powers” here involved? Under the Alien and Sedition Acts, said the Kentucky
Resolution,

the General Government may place any act they think proper on the list of crimes and punish it themselves,
whether enumerated or not enumerated by the Constitution as cognizable by them; . . . they may transfer its
cognizance to the President or any other person who may himself be the accuser, counsel, judge and jury, whose
suspicions may be the evidence, his order the sentence, his officer the executioner, and his breast the sole record
of the transaction. . . .

The “friendless alien” had been selected “as the safest subject of a first experiment” in the absolute dominion of
one man, but the American citizen would soon follow. Indeed, the Sedition Act already had seized upon
American citizens for its prey. Prosecutions under these offensive laws, unless halted, would furnish “new
calumnies against Republican Governments, and new pretexts for those who wish it to be believed, that man
cannot be governed but by a rod of iron.”

Yet it had been urged that the Sedition Act was not intended to stifle honest criticism or reasonable opposition to
the government; it was aimed only at libellers who would defame all government. Have confidence, the
Federalists had urged, and all would be well.

Jefferson answered in hard and ringing words. Let it be resolved, said the Kentucky Resolution,

That it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the
safety of our rights; that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism; free government is founded in
jealousy and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited Constitutions to bind
down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to
which and no further our confidence may go; and let the honest advocate of confidence read the Alien and
Sedition Acts and say if the Constitution has not been wise in fixing the limits to the government it created, and

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whether we should be wise in destroying those limits. . . . In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of
confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.

Thus setting forth her views of the Alien and Sedition Acts, and of the nature of the Union, Kentucky asked in
her resolution for co-States to resolve the question: Are these acts authorized, or are they not, by the
Constitution? For Kentucky’s own part, the Legislature viewed the acts

as so palpably against the Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration, that the compact is not meant
to be the measure of the powers of the General Government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these
States of all powers whatsoever.

This would mean, said the Kentucky Resolution, that the States had surrendered the form of government they so
recently had created—that they elected to live under a government “deriving its powers from its own will, and
not from our authority.” The Resolution prayed that the co-States, recurring to their natural right, would concur
“in declaring these acts void and of no force,” and would unite in demanding their repeal.

Speaking to this Resolution, Breckinridge made it plain in the Kentucky House that something more than a mere
memorial was involved.

“When the government of the United States enact impolitic laws,” he declared, “we can only say: We pray you
to repeal them. As to matters of mere policy, they are, it is admitted, vested with a discretionary power.

“But when they pass laws beyond the limits of the Constitution —laws which they are no more authorized to
pass than the Grand Turk—we do not ask a repeal, but ought to make a legislative declaration that, being
unconstitutional, they are therefore void and of no effect.”(26)

Breckinridge hoped that Congress would repeal the offending laws, without waiting for them to expire.
Meanwhile, he prayed that honest judges would refuse to act upon them. But if the courts should nevertheless
attempt to enforce the laws?

“I hesitate not to declare it as my opinion that it is then the right and duty of the several States to nullify those
acts, and to protect their citizens from their operation.”

It was objected that Paterson, Washington, Chase, and some lower Federal judges already had held the acts
Constitutional. If the courts said the laws were Constitutional, who could say otherwise?

“Who are the judiciary?” demanded Breckinridge. “Who are they, but a part of the servants of the people created
by the Federal compact? And if the servants of the people have a right, is it good reasoning to say that the
people by whom and for whose benefit both they and the government were created, are destitute of that right?”

It was not to be supposed, he added, that the peoples’ immediate representatives, serving in the government of a
State, were to do nothing but “to behold in silence the most flagrant violations of their rights, and bow in silence
to any power that may attempt to impress them.” Certainly the States had a right “to remonstrate with men who
may meditate their annihilation,” and for the time being, only an expression, a remonstrance, and an appeal were
proposed: “We do not pretend to set ourselves up as censors for the Union, but we will firmly express our own
opinions and call upon the other States to examine their political situation.”

Kentucky completed its action on November 16. Four weeks later, on Thursday, December 13, Virginia took up
the cause. At the instance of James Madison, who was not himself a member of the General Assembly, John
Taylor of Caroline offered in the House of Delegates what is now known simply as the “Virginia Resolution.”

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Eight days later it won approval in the House by a party-line vote of 100-63; the Virginia Senate promptly
concurred, 14-3, and on Christmas Eve, the Resolution went forth to sister States.

The Virginia Resolution(27) is considerably shorter than its counterpart in Kentucky. It opens with a
conciliatory resolve that the Virginia General Assembly

doth unequivocally express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and
the Constitution of this State, against every aggression either foreign or domestic, and that they will support the
government of the United States in all measures warranted by the former.

The second resolve continues on a firmer note:

That this Assembly most solemnly declares a warm attachment to the Union of the States, to maintain which it
pledges all its powers; and that for this end, it is their duty to watch over and oppose every infraction of those
principles which constitute the only basis of that union, because a faithful observance of them, can alone secure
its existence and the public happiness.

As Madison was to observe in his report the following year, “no unfavorable comment” could be directed
toward the sentiments expressed to that point.

It is in the third paragraph that the Virginia Resolution gets to the heart of the State and Federal relationship
under the Constitution:

That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the Federal
Government, as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and
intention of the instrument constituting that compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants
enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers,
not granted by the said compact, the States who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to
interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities,
rights, and liberties appertaining to them.

One amendment was made in this paragraph by the House prior to approval of the Resolution. As Taylor
introduced the resolution, the language would have recited that Federal powers result “from the compact to
which the States alone are parties.” With Taylor’s consent, the word “alone” was dropped.

Because this third paragraph of the Virginia Resolution is so essential to the doctrine of States’ rights which this
essay undertakes to defend and to promote, it will be argued at some length hereafter. In the interests of an
orderly presentation, it seems best at this point simply to proceed with the text of the Resolution as adopted in
the Virginia Assembly that December.

The fourth resolve, except for its concluding reference to monarchy (which seems anachronistic now, but was a
serious matter then), might have been drafted in our own time. It declares

That the General Assembly doth also express its deep regret, that a spirit has in sundry instances, been
manifested by the Federal Government, to enlarge its powers by forced constructions of the Constitutional
charter which defines them; and that indications have appeared of a design to expound certain general phrases
(which having been copied from the very limited grant of powers in the former articles of confederation were
the less liable to be misconstrued) so as to destroy the meaning and effect, of the particular enumeration which
necessarily explains and limits the general phrases; and so as to consolidate the States by degrees, into one
sovereignty, the obvious tendency and inevitable consequence of which would be, to transform the present
republican system of the United States, into an absolute, or at best a mixed monarchy.

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In the fifth and sixth paragraphs, the resolution takes up the immediate provocation of the Alien and Sedition
Acts, and recalls the devotion to freedom of the press that was deeply held in Virginia then, and—it may be
added, with a Virginia editor’s pride in his State—is held as devotedly now. Here the Assembly resolved:

That the General Assembly doth particularly protest against the palpable and alarming infractions of the
Constitution, in the two late cases of the “Alien and Sedition Acts” passed at the last session of Congress; the
first of which exercises a power nowhere delegated to the Federal Government, and which by uniting legislative
and judicial powers to those of executive, subverts the general principles of free government, as well as the
particular organization, and positive provisions of the Federal Constitution; and the other of which acts,
exercises in like manner, a power not delegated by the Constitution, but on the contrary, expressly and positively
forbidden by one of the amendments thereto;—a power, which more than any other, ought to produce universal
alarm, because it is levelled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free
communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed, the only effectual guardian of
every other right.

That this State having by its convention, which ratified the Federal Constitution, expressly declared, that among
other essential rights, “the liberty of conscience and of the press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or
modified by any authority of the United States,” and from its extreme anxiety to guard these rights from every
possible attack of sophistry or ambition, having with other States, recommended an amendment for that purpose,
which amendment was, in due time, annexed to the Constitution, it would mark a reproachful inconsistency, and
criminal degeneracy, if an indifference were now shewn, to the most palpable violation of one of the rights, thus
declared and secured; and to the establishment of a precedent which may be fatal to the other.

In the seventh paragraph, the Virginia Resolution returns to the conciliatory note with which Madison and
Taylor began. The people of Virginia express their sincere affection for their brethren in other States,
acknowledge their anxiety for establishing and perpetuating the Union, and avow their “most scrupulous fidelity
to that Constitution which is the pledge of mutual friendship and the instrument of mutual happiness.” On this
basis,

the General Assembly doth solemnly appeal to the like dispositions of the other States, in confidence that they
will concur with this Commonwealth in declaring, as it does hereby declare, that the acts aforesaid, are
unconstitutional;(28) and that the necessary and proper measures will be taken by each, for co-operating with
this State, in maintaining the authorities, rights and liberties, reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The concluding, ninth, paragraph of the resolves directs that copies be sent to other States.

Now, that is the Virginia Resolution of 1798. It was thoroughly debated from December 13 through December
21 in the House of Delegates. To be sure, many of the most illustrious and best known Virginians of the
Convention of 1788 were not present in the Hall: Mason was dead; Henry, dying by inches at Red Hill;
Marshall, busily campaigning for Congress; Madison, on the sidelines—he had retired from Congress the year
before, and was not to be elected to the Virginia Assembly until the following year. But no apologies are
necessary for the quality of the debate. Led by John Taylor of Caroline in favor of the Resolution, and by
George Keith Taylor of Prince George County, an ardent Federalist, against it, the argument profoundly
explored the nature of the Federal Union.

Something should be said of John Taylor. He was born, probably in 1753,(29) in Orange County, Virginia; left
an orphan at ten; raised by his uncle, Edmund Pendleton, in Caroline County. He had fought in the Revolution;
as a major, he had commanded troops under Lafayette in the weeks before Yorktown. Twice he served in the
Virginia Legislature, first from 1779 to 1785, again from 1796 to 1800. He was an active and successful lawyer,
three times a member of the United States Senate, a resourceful farmer whose theories of soil conservation (set
out in Arator in 1813) antedated many of the modern farm practices of today. Above all, Taylor was a student of

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politics and government. He set out, in Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated (1820) and again
in New Views of the Constitution (1823) a veritable Summa Theologiae for the States’ Righter. These works are
not easy reading—John Randolph of Roanoke once complained that Taylor needed a translator for his
books(30)—but they rank with Calhoun’s great addresses of 1831 and 1832 in expounding the federal nature of
the Union. Thomas H. Benton placed him high among “that constellation of great men which shone so brightly
in Virginia in his day,”(31) and Beveridge much later was to describe him as “the bravest, most consistent, most
unselfish, as well as one of the ablest of Republicans.”(32)

John Taylor of Caroline opened debate on the Virginia Resolution with a direct attack on the Alien and Sedition
Acts, but shortly the issues broadened. And when Archibald Magill, a Federalist Delegate from Frederick
County, declared it “clear and evident” that the Federal government had a right “at common law” to enact the
Sedition Law,(33) the whole debate was enlarged to explore the State and Federal relationship. It was Taylor’s
position, of course, that the Federal government had no inherent powers of “common law.” The truth was then
(and is now), that the Congress draws its authority from the enumerated powers of the Constitution only, and
beyond these limits Congress has no authority.

What if Congress palpably exceed its authority? What was the remedy, if, as in this case, Congress enacted a
grossly unconstitutional law, the executive signed it, and the courts approved it? Were the States and the people
helpless?

Taylor thought not. Almost six months earlier, on June 25, he had planted in Jefferson’s fertile mind the seed of
the Kentucky Resolution: “The right of the State governments to expound the Constitution,” he had written,
“might possibly be made the basis of a movement toward its amendment.”(34) And beyond the State
governments, said Taylor, anticipating South Carolina’s action of November, 1832, were the people in State
conventions—they are “incontrovertibly the contracting parties.” But some step was imperative at once, and the
asserted right of Virginia to interpose “for arresting the progress of the evil” provided a sound and
Constitutional approach.

Now, William Cowan, a Federalist Delegate from Lunenburg County, had termed the Taylor-Madison
Resolution a perfidious act, “because, by undertaking to declare one law of Congress unconstitutional, the
Legislature would assume a power of declaring all their laws unconstitutional.”(35)

Let us follow Taylor’s response carefully, for he is replying here to the objection most frequently voiced against
the doctrine of interposition—that it would breed constitutional chaos.

Let the proposition be reversed, said Taylor. Would it be said that the Legislature could not declare this act of
Congress unconstitutional?

Admitting such a position, did not these consequences evidently follow, that the check meditated against
Congress in the existence of the State governments, was demolished; that Congress might at its pleasure violate
the Constitutional rights of these governments; that they must instantly become dependent, and be finally
annihilated? Could it be perfidious to preserve the freedom of religion, of speech, of the press, and even the right
of petitioning for a redress of grievances?(36)

Federalist speakers had insisted, Taylor observed, “that every government inherently possesses the powers
necessary for its own preservation.” Without conceding the point, in the case of a Federal government created
by the States, was it not evident that the broad principle surely applied to the State governments themselves? It
must follow “that the State governments have a right to withstand such unconstitutional laws of Congress [and,
it may be interpolated, unconstitutional decrees of a Supreme Court] as may tend to their destruction, because
‘such a power is necessary for their preservation.’”

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Suppose, asked Taylor, Congress were to re-establish the plan of inheritance by primogeniture? Obviously,
Congress had no Constitutional authority to enact such a law. Were the States to let their chancery courts fall
into chaos, and all State laws of inheritance and descent be upset, while State legislatures merely remonstrated
with the Congress or petitioned for repeal? By the time new Congressmen could be elected on a pledge to repeal
the law, the mischief would be done; eggs once broken and scrambled could not be made whole again. Were the
States to submit to such a clear invasion of their reserved powers, “all powers whatsoever would gradually be
absorbed by, and consolidated in, the general government.”

Turning to another argument, Taylor noted that Congress clearly had a procedure, under Article V, by which it
could check and challenge encroachment by the States upon the Federal sphere: Two-thirds of each House of
Congress could propose an amendment to the Constitution to resolve a question of contested power. Similarly,
two-thirds of the States, perceiving an encroachment by Federal authority, could demand that a convention be
called to propose an amendment for the same purpose. But in the end, who was to decide such questions?
Obviously, the States themselves. Congress could propose; the States would dispose. Let it never be supposed,
said Taylor emphatically, “that the States hold their constitutional rights by the courtesy of Congress.”(37) No.
“Congress is the creature of the States and of the people; but neither the States nor the people are the creatures
of Congress. It would be evidently absurd, that the creature should exclusively construe the instrument of its
own existence.”

In a milder tone, Taylor then emphasized the intention of the Virginia Resolution. Was insurrection proposed?
Or violent secession from the Union? Resort to arms? None of these. Are the Republicans, he asked, possessed
of fleets and armies? If not, to what could they appeal for defense and support? To nothing save public opinion.
If that should be against them, they must yield. Meanwhile, the resolution of interposition offered to Virginia
“the only possible and ordinary mode of ascertaining the opinion of two-thirds of the States, by declaring its
own, and asking theirs.” The States, in the last resort, were the final referees.

It was objected that the Supreme Court was created to arbitrate such questions of contested power. This was
Taylor’s reply:

With respect, he said, to the remedy proposed in the talents and integrity of the continental judges, without
regarding the prejudices which might probably exist in favour of the government, from which an appointment
should flow, it might be remarked, that the judges by the Constitution are not made its exclusive guardians. That
if continental judges were the proper referees as to the constitutionality of continental laws, State judges were
the proper referees as to the constitutionality of State laws; that neither possessed a power over the other,
whence a clashing of adjudication might ensue; and that if either had been a superior, the same consequences
would result as would flow from a superiority of Congress, or of the States over the other, with this additional
aggravation, that the people could not by their elections influence a constitutional question, to be decided by the
judges, as they could to a certain extent, when it was to be decided by a general or State legislature. . . .(38)

Taylor’s argument was long and tightly reasoned. Unlike Henry or Mason or Randolph, he had no gift for humor
or for the digressions that relieve a major speech. His address of December 20 must have wearied the House, for
late in the afternoon, when a Federalist Delegate from the Eastern Shore arose to reply, “such a noise prevailed,
from the impatience of the committee to rise, that he could not be distinctly heard; he declined, and sat down.”

Yet Taylor’s arguments carried the day. On the next afternoon, despite an equally long and humorless address
by George Keith Taylor, the Virginia Resolution came to a vote; and after three Federalist challenges had been
beaten off; it passed and went to the Senate by a straight party-line division, 100-63. And on the 24th, as we
have noted, the Senate sent it forth.

During the course of the debate, twenty-four-year-old James Barbour, who later was to have a brilliant career in
Virginia, had freely predicted what would happen: Other States, under the domination of Federalist legislatures,

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would reject any resolutions from Kentucky or Virginia critical of the Adams administration.(39) Indeed they
did: Delaware promptly declared the Virginia Resolution “an unjustifiable interference with the General
Government . . . and of dangerous tendency.” Rhode Island denounced “the very unwarrantable resolutions.”
Massachusetts said that “The people, in that solemn compact which is declared to be the supreme law of the
land, have not constituted the State legislatures the judges of the acts or measures of the Federal governments.”
New York spurned these “inflammatory and pernicious sentiments and doctrines.” Connecticut viewed the
Resolution “with deep regret.” New Hampshire, resolving that the Alien and Sedition Acts were “constitutional
and expedient,” declared that “State Legislatures are not proper tribunals to determine the constitutionality of the
laws of the General Government.” Vermont, which “highly disapproves,” added that the power to decide on the
constitutionality of laws made by Congress had been “exclusively vested in the judiciary courts of the Union.”

And throughout the spring of 1799, the half-war with France brought new prosecutions of Republican
sympathisers. Samuel Chase, his wig askew, continued on circuit. The Federalist party, bent on its own
destruction, rushed headlong into the revolution of 1800 that swept Jefferson into the presidency.

The adverse replies of Federalist legislatures, as Barbour had noted, were clearly predictable; but predictable or
not, they had to be answered:

Kentucky, acknowledging that further action would be “unavailing,” nevertheless stood her ground in a second
resolution, adopted unanimously on November 14, 1799. It is not long:

RiESOLVED, That this Commonwealth considers the Federal Union, upon the terms and for the purposes
specified in the late compact, conducive to the liberty and happiness of the several States: That it does now
unequivocally declare its attachment to the Union, and to that compact, agreeably to its obvious and real
intention, and will be among the last to seek its dissolution: That, if those who administer the General
Government be permitted to transgress the limits fixed by that compact, by a total disregard to the special
delegations of power therein contained, an annihilation of the State Governments, and the creation upon their
ruins, of a General Consolidated Government, will be the inevitable consequence: That the principle and
construction contended for by sundry of the State legislatures, that the General Government is the exclusive
judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing [short] of despotism—since the discretion of those
who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers: That the
several States who formed that instrument being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to
judge of the infraction; and, That a Nullification by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under
color of that instrument is the rightful remedy: That this Commonwealth does, under the most deliberate
reconsideration, declare, that the said Alien and Sedition Laws are, in their opinion, palpable violations of the
said Constitution: and, however cheerfully it may be disposed to surrender its opinion to a majority of its sister
States, in matters of ordinary or doubtful policy, yet, in momentous regulations like the present, which so vitally
wound the best rights of the citizen, it would consider a silent acquiescence as highly criminal: That, although
this commonwealth, as a party to the federal compact, will bow to the laws of the Union, yet, it does, at the same
[time] declare, that it will not now, or ever hereafter, cease to oppose in a constitutional manner, every attempt
at what quarter soever offered, to violate that compact. And, finally, in order that no pretext or arguments may
be drawn from a supposed acquiescence, on the part of this Commonwealth in the constitutionality of those
laws, and be thereby used as precedents for similar future violations of the Federal compact—this
Commonwealth does now enter against them its solemn PROTEST.(40)

The most notable aspect of this Second Kentucky Resolution, and the one to which attention most frequently is
drawn, is the use of the word “nullification”—that “a nullification by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized
acts done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.” It is a mistake to read into Kentucky’s protest
of 1799 a Jeffersonian sanction for South Carolina’s action of 1832. Considered as a whole, the resolution is
what its concluding phrase declares it to be—a protest on the part of Kentuckians who “will bow to the laws of
the Union,” but “will not cease to oppose, in a Constitutional manner,” laws which the State solemnly regards as

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palpably unconstitutional. This was an expression of opinion that the laws were void, and hence not laws at all;
and it was a pledge to oppose them by every Constitutional means. When it is recalled that the hated enactments,
at this point, had fewer than fifteen months to run before their statutory expiration, it may be submitted that
neither Kentucky nor Virginia felt that more drastic action was required.

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 5
Mr. Madison's Report of 1799
THIS WAS Madison's view in Virginia. The month after Kentucky adopted her Second Resolution, Madison
brought to the Virginia House of Delegates the long report of a special committee to which the replies of other
States had been referred. His object was to re-examine the Resolution of 1798, “and to inquire whether there be
any errors of fact, or principle, or of reasoning, which the candour of the General Assembly ought to
acknowledge and correct.” The committee gave special attention to the third resolve of the preceding year—they
scanned it “not merely with a strict, but with a severe eye”—and confidently pronounced it, in its just and fair
construction, to be “unexceptionally true in its several positions, as well as constitutional and conclusive in its
inferences.”

The third resolve had opened with an assertion that the powers of the Federal Government “result from the
compact. . . .” Madison found it sufficient to remark that in all the debates and discussions when the
Constitution was pending for ratification, “it was constantly justified and recommended, on the ground, that the
powers not given to the government, were withheld from it.” Indeed, he added, the subsequent Tenth
Amendment should have removed all doubt in its reference to “the powers not delegated to the United States by
the Constitution.”

What of the declaration that it is a compact “to which the States are parties”? Admitting that the term “States” is
sometimes used in a vague sense, Madison could find no objection to the language. The proper meaning of the
term here was to be found in the sense of States as “the people composing . . . political societies, in their highest
sovereign capacity.” Thus employed, it could not be denied that

the Constitution was submitted to the “States”; in that sense, the “States” ratified it; and, in that sense of the term
“States,” they are consequently parties to the compact, from which the powers of the Federal government result.

The next assertion, in the controversial third resolve, was that Federal powers are limited “by the plain sense and
intention of the instrument constituting that compact,” and also, that Federal powers are “no farther valid than
they are authorized by the grants therein enumerated.” It does not seem possible, said Madison, that anyone
could object to that statement. The Constitution meant what the participating parties to it intended it to mean;
and as for the limit on Federal powers, this was clear: “If the powers granted be valid, it is solely because they
are granted; and, if the granted powers are valid, because granted, all other powers not granted, must not be
valid.”

Then comes the key sentence: “That, in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers,
not granted by the said compact, the States, who are parties thereto, have the right and are in duty bound, to
interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities,
rights, and liberties appertaining to them.”

This is the heart and soul of the “right to interpose.” The language was to be re-affirmed, substantially verbatim,
by the Hartford Convention in 1814; by the Wisconsin Legislature in 1859; and by the Virginia General
Assembly in 1956. When men talk of the “Doctrine of ’98,” this is the paragraph they are talking of. Let
Madison speak at length, and without interruption:

It appears to your committee to be a plain principle, founded in common sense, illustrated by common practice,
and essential to the nature of compacts, that, where resort can be had to no tribunal, superior to the authority of
the parties, the parties themselves must be the rightful judges in the last resort, whether the bargain made has
been pursued or violated. The Constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction of the States, given

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by each in its sovereign capacity. It adds to the stability and dignity, as well as to the authority of the
Constitution, that it rests on this legitimate and solid foundation. The States, then, being the parties to the
constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity, that there can be no tribunal
above their authority, to decide in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and,
consequently, that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be
of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.

It does not follow, however, that because the States, as sovereign parties to their constitutional compact, must
ultimately decide whether it has been violated, that such a decision ought to be interposed, either in a hasty
manner, or on doubtful and inferior occasions. Even in the case of ordinary conventions between different
nations, where, by the strict rule of interpretation, a breach of a part may be deemed a breach of the whole, every
part being deemed a condition of every other part and of the whole, it is always laid down that the breach must
be both wilful and material to justify an application of the rule. But in the case of an intimate and constitutional
union, like that of the United States, it is evident that the interposition of the parties, in their sovereign capacity,
can be called for by occasions only, deeply and essentially affecting the vital principles of their political system.

The resolution has accordingly guarded against any misapprehension of its object, by expressly requiring for
such an interposition, the case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous breach of the Constitution, by the
exercise of powers not granted by it. It must be a case, not of a light and transient nature, but of a nature
dangerous to the great purposes for which the Constitution was established. It must be a case, moreover, not
obscure or doubtful in its construction, but plain and palpable. Lastly, it must be a case not resulting from a
partial consideration, or hasty determination; but a case stamped with a final consideration and deliberate
adherence. It is not necessary, because the resolution does not require that the question should be discussed, how
far the exercise of any particular power, ungranted by the Constitution, would justify the interposition of the
parties to it. As cases might easily be stated, which none would contend ought to fall with- in that description,
cases, on the other hand, might, with equal ease, be stated, so flagrant and so fatal, as to unite every opinion in
placing them within that description.

But the resolution has done more than guard against misconstruction, by expressly referring to cases of a
deliberate, palpable, and dangerous nature. It specifies the object of the interposition which it contemplates, to
be solely that of arresting the progress of the evil of usurpation, and of maintaining the authorities, rights, and
liberties appertaining to the States, as parties to the Constitution.

From this view of the resolution, it would seem inconceivable that it can incur any just disapprobation from
those who, laying aside all momentary impressions, and recollecting the genuine source and object of the
Federal Constitution, shall candidly and accurately interpret the meaning of the General Assembly. If the
deliberate exercise of dangerous powers, palpably withheld by the Constitution, could not justify the parties to
it, in interposing even so far as to arrest the progress of the evil, and thereby to preserve the Constitution itself,
as well as to provide for the safety of the parties to it, there would be an end to all relief from usurped power,
and a direct subversion of the rights specified or recognised under all the State constitutions, as well as a plain
denial of the fundamental principle on which our independence itself was declared.

But it is objected that the judicial authority is to be regarded as the sole expositor of the Constitution, in the last
resort; and it may be asked for what reason, the declaration by the General Assembly, supposing it to be
theoretically true, could be required at the present day and in so solemn a manner.

On this objection it might be observed, first, that there may be instances of usurped power, which the forms of
the Constitution would never draw within the control of the judicial department; secondly, that if the decision of
the judiciary be raised above the authority of the sovereign parties to the Constitution, the decisions of the other
departments, not carried by the forms of the Constitution before the judiciary, must be equally authoritative and
final with the decisions of that department. But the proper answer to the objection is, that the resolution of the

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General Assembly relates to those great and extraordinary cases, in which all the forms of the Constitution may
prove ineffectual against infractions dangerous to the essential rights of the parties to it. The resolution supposes
that dangerous powers, not delegated, may not only be usurped and executed by the other departments, but that
the judicial department also may exercise or sanction dangerous powers beyond the grant of the Constitution;
and, consequently, that the ultimate right of the parties to the Constitution, to judge whether the compact has
been dangerously violated, must extend to violations by one delegated authority, as well as by another; by the
judiciary, as well as by the executive, or the legislature.

However true, therefore, it may be, that the judicial department, is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms
of the Constitution, to decide in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the
authorities of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the
constitutional compact, from which the judicial as well as the other departments hold their delegated trusts. On
any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the
concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the
possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve.

The truth declared in the resolution being established, the expediency of making the declaration at the present
day, may safely be left to the temperate consideration and candid judgment of the American public. It will be
remembered that a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles, is solemnly enjoined by most of the State
constitutions, and particularly by our own, as a necessary safeguard against the danger of degeneracy to which
republics are liable, as well as other governments, though in a less degree than others. And a fair comparison of
the political doctrines not unfrequent at the present day, with those which characterized the epoch of our
revolution, and which form the basis of our republican constitutions, will best determine whether the declaratory
recurrence here made to those principles, ought to be viewed as unseasonable and improper, or as a vigilant
discharge of an important duty. The authority of constitutions over governments, and of the sovereignty of the
people over constitutions, are truths which are at all times necessary to be kept in mind; and at no time perhaps
more necessary than at the present.

Special attention may be directed, perhaps, to the several paragraphs in which Madison dealt with the possibility
of encroachment by the judiciary upon the reserved powers of the States. In Federalist 39, it will be recalled, he
had described the Supreme Court as “the tribunal which is ultimately to decide” controversies between State and
Federal authority. He had assumed, then, that such decisions would be “impartially made, according to the rules
of the Constitution,” and he had remarked that “some such tribunal is clearly essential to prevent an appeal to
the sword and a dissolution of the compact.” Some thirty years later, with two terms in the White House behind
him, Madison again was to take the side of national authority.(41) He was to insist, then, that the States must
submit to unconstitutional encroachments upon their authority or take the ultimate resort of armed rebellion and
secession. Late in his life, the idea of action by the States “to arrest the progress of the evil” seemed to have
escaped Madison’s mind. The alternatives, to the Madison of 1830-31, were two: Submission, or war.

He was on the right track in 1799. As events in our own time have clearly demonstrated, it is indeed quite
possible for the Federal judiciary, by arrogating unto itself the prerogatives of the Congress and the States, to
usurp powers not granted to the general government by the Constitution nor prohibited by the Constitution to the
States. In Madison’s own phrase, it has been abundantly proven that “dangerous powers, not delegated” may be
usurped not only by Congress, “but that the judicial department also may exercise or sanction dangerous
powers beyond the grant of the Constitution.” And what was Madison’s remedy in 1799? Let it be repeated: The
ultimate right of the parties to judge whether the compact has been dangerously violated “must extend to
violations by one delegated authority as well as by another—by the judiciary, as well as by the executive, or the
legislature.”

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What Madison here recognized—and what he later was to overlook—is that the Constitution had one major
flaw: The Constitution had established an ingenious system of checks and balances by which every conceivable
source of oppression, with a single exception, may effectively be held in bounds.

That single exception is the Supreme Court of the United States.

Consider the other weights and counterweights contrived by the founding fathers: The pressure of large blocks
of population, as represented in the House, would be offset by the authority of the States, as represented in the
Senate. The power of the Congress could be checked by Presidential veto. The power of the President could
again be balanced by the authority of Congress to over-ride a veto. The judicial branch, restraining Congress and
the executive alike, was to provide a further barrier against usurpation of power. Beyond this, the people
themselves, through their right of franchise, would serve as a direct check upon their Representatives in the
House (and later in the Senate). The presidential electors, reflecting the will of the people, could refuse a second
term to a President who overstepped his powers.

But in this whole remarkable machine, the founding fathers left one great power uncontrolled: The judiciary
alone, of all agencies of government, was left with no effective restraint, save—as a learned justice was to
comment much later—the judges’ own sense of self-restraint.(42)

It was not planned that way. At the time the Constitution was formed, three misconceptions affected critical
thought. The first was that judges named to the Supreme Court would be men of towering reputation at the
bench or bar, learned, impartial, beyond political feeling. The second was that the judiciary, lacking control over
both purse and sword, would ever be the weakest branch of government. The third was that, in the wholly
improbable event that the Supreme Court should transgress its powers, Congress could invoke the weapon of
impeachment against individual judges, or could control the Court’s appellate jurisdiction by exercising its
authority to fix “exceptions” and “regulations” under which cases could be heard on appeal.

In operation, these concepts swiftly proved faulty. Some of the early appointees to the Court were men of small
stature; yet under Marshall, the Court was shaped into not the weakest, but in fact the strongest arm of the
Federal government. Impeachment, as Jefferson scornfully remarked,(43) was no more than a scarecrow. As for
making exceptions to the Court’s appellate powers, Congress speedily saw the Pandora’s box that would be
opened by indiscriminate tinkering.(44)

But in the beginning, very little of this was foreseen; and those, like Henry, who perceived the dangers, were
smoothly talked down. Little of the argument of 1787-88 went to the heart of the Court’s powers; most of it
groped around the edges.

“Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power,” said Hamilton, “must perceive that in a
government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will
always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to
annoy or injure them.” He continued:

The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only
commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated.
The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the
strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have
neither force nor will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even
for the efficacy of its judgments.(45)

Beyond comparison, Hamilton went on to say, the judiciary “is the weakest of the three departments of power.”
He recalled a comment from Montesquieu—”Of the three powers above mentioned, the judiciary is next to

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nothing.” The Court, Hamilton predicted, could never attack the executive or the legislative branch successfully.
And while individual instances of judicial oppression might occur, “the general liberty of the people can never
be endangered from that quarter.” Hamilton’s chief concern was for the judiciary itself: Considering its “natural
feebleness,” he thought it “in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its coordinate
branches.”

To be sure, it was contemplated that the Supreme Court would have power to pronounce legislative acts contrary
to the Constitution and hence void. This might imply a superiority on the part of the court over the Congress.
Not so, said Hamilton. It was the Constitution that would be supreme. The Court was no more than its
interpreter. And suppose the interpreter should err? Suppose that judges might substitute their will instead of
their judgment in passing on laws? Hamilton gave no weight to this argument. It might as well happen, he said,
that members of the legislative branch would err by adopting contradictory statutes. The caprice of lawmakers,
the caprice of judges—he could see no difference; but what Hamilton here overlooked is that lawmakers are
subject to a direct and recurring approval from the people at the polls. Judges serve for life, beyond the reach of
the franchise.

Hamilton’s point here was to emphasize that the Court and the Congress ranked as equals, but the power of the
people, as declared in the Constitution, is superior to both. Ultimately, all authority must come back to the
Constitution; here and here only is to be found the supreme law of the land.

The question that Hamilton was grappling with in the Federalist is the same question, basically, that troubles
some of the States in the Union in mid-twentieth Century. How can the ultimate authority of the people declare
itself effectively against encroachments by the Court? Is it to be argued that the judiciary, alone among all
departments of government, is infallible—that it cannot commit an unconstitutional act? If that be the argument,
then is it not true that a majority of five on a Court of nine have the power, subject to no immediate and effective
check, to shape the Constitution as they please?

No such sweeping and authoritarian power, it may be submitted, ever was intended to be vested in the Supreme
Court of the United States. To defend this proposition is to cancel out the entire philosophy of a federal union of
States; to advance this argument is to make a mockery of the whole plan of checks and balances.

In logic, in reason, in history, in plain common sense, there must be, in the American plan, some Constitutional
check upon the Court. It is to be found today where it has existed all along, in the right of the States to interpose
their sovereign powers against judicial tyranny. And in 1799, Madison saw this to be true.

Now, it will be objected that it is nowhere spelled out in the Constitution, that the States have any right to raise a
question of contested powers, and by such an appeal to seek to frustrate enforcement of an edict of the Court.
For that matter, it is nowhere spelled out in the Constitution that the Court has any authority to declare an act of
Congress, or of the executive, a void enactment. This power simply was asserted by the Court. It was a power
that had to be asserted by the Court. Similarly, the power of the States to interpose against judicial tyranny is a
power that must be asserted, simply in the nature of things, if the States are to survive. The alternative is a
government in which the States-people are not supreme, but five men are supreme over them; it is a government
in which the understood intention of the Constitution may be swept away by the caprice, or the sociology, of a
majority of the Court.

In the 1830’s, Madison himself was to object that the doctrine of interposition, effectively applied, is the
doctrine of anarchy—that the right of a State to suspend one law, as to itself, is the right of a State to suspend all
laws—or a right, vested in all of the States, to pick and choose those laws which they will obey, and those laws
they will defy. But this objection is more theoretical than real. It presupposes, on the part of the States, a
willingness to put State interests above national interests, which assumption scarcely can be defended in the
light of a hundred years of submissive acceptance by the States of Federal expansion. It presupposes, also, that

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the States would interpose upon light or transient grounds. This is, at bottom, the assumption of those
nationalists who aggrandize the Federal government as a power that can do no wrong (save only when it fails to
reach as far as they would like), and treat the States as puny, self-interested bodies devoid of feeling or concern
for those interests that truly are national in scope.

More than this, the objections to interposition by the States against “deliberate, palpable, and dangerous”
encroachments upon their rights, are basically the weak and tremulous cries of spineless fellows who would
rather bear the ills of despotism than risk the dangers of a transient anarchy. They are the docile, automaton
voices repeating, in deadly unison, “we must obey, we must be slaves, we must comply.” Opposed to them are
the still vigorous voices, repeating, after Hamilton himself, “There is no position which depends on clearer
principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is
exercised, is void.” No legislative act, no judgment of the Court, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To
deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal, that the servant is above his master,
that the judges, subject to the people’s Constitution, are above the Constitution; that nine men named for life
may exercise not only those powers of adjudication with which they are vested, but also those powers of
effective Constitutional amendment which are denied them.

Quis custodiet custodies? Who will watch the watchdogs? The Madison Report of 1799 provided the only
possible basis for answering the question; it set forth the missing check-and-balance; it suggested a means by
which the progress of judicial tyranny may be arrested. The right of the States to interpose, he said, “must
extend to violations by one delegated authority as well as by another—by the judiciary, as well as by the
executive or the legislature.”

But how is this right—not a privilege, but a right—to be exercised? Clearly, the first step is for an infraction of
the compact to be charged. Who is to make such a charge? The answer must be, of course, the States. They are
the parties to the compact, each standing equally with the others. Is it necessary that any particular number of
States unite in charging an infraction? Obviously, no. A particular usurpation by the Federal government may
affect only a single State, or no more than two or three, but the nature of the usurpation, to the affected States,
may be such as to destroy their most cherished institutions. If the right to interpose could be exercised only by
not fewer than one-fourth of the States, or one-third, acting in concert, the right would be meaningless; the
federal nature of the compact, in which each respective State is an equal member, would thereby be subverted.

Now, the author of this essay is not here suggesting that in every case of grave usurpation of State prerogatives,
the aggrieved State —or States—must exert the right to interpose in its most drastic form. Interposition, as the
term is used herein, embraces the widest possible range of State protest, remonstrance, objection and
intervention. The term covers what Madison himself described, in the Federalist, as means by which Federal
encroachments could be resisted. Should an unwarrantable measure of the Federal government be unpopular in
particular States, he said,

the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and,
perhaps, refusal to cooperate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State,
the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would
oppose, in any State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened
to be in unison, would present obstructions which the Federal government would hardly be willing to
encounter.(46)

Yet if the right to interpose has any effective meaning, it must extend beyond the range of mere protest, as in the
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions; it must be more than remonstrance, as in Virginia’s action on the debt
assumption act. It must be more than a deferential memorial to the Congress. In practice, it must extend even
beyond the “legislative devices” that Madison envisioned. In those rare and exceptional cases in which
submission to usurped power would mean the destruction of a vital State institution, means must exist by which

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even one State may take action to suspend Federal encroachment pending an appeal to the ultimate sovereignty
of all the States. In this last form, the right to interpose is the right of effective nullification; it is the right of
appeal with supersedeas.

The States of the American Union, in their continuing conflict with Federal authority, have exercised this right
many times, in varying forms and in different degrees of forcefulness. Not only State executives and
legislatures, but State judges also have thus asserted State sovereignty. The right to interpose has been exercised
by New England and Midwestern States no less than by Southern States, for the right is inherent in the existence
of a State, apart from considerations of geography or commerce. In the next section, some of the applications of
this right will be reviewed.

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THE SOVEREIGN STATES
Notes of a Citizen of Virginia
by James Jackson Kilpatrick

Part 3
The States Fight Back
1. The Olmstead Case
2. The Case of the Lands of Lord Fairfax
3. The Embargo Crisis
4. Matters of the Militia
5. Events of 1814
6. The Hartford Convention
7. The Bank of the United States
8. Internal Improvements
9. Kentucky vs. the Court
10. Georgia vs. the Court
11. Calhoun and Nullification
12. The Case for Nullification
13. The Personal Liberty Laws
14. The Obligation of Contracts
15. After the War
16. The Reconstruction Cases
17. The Commerce Clause (Commenced)
18. Interlude in a Speakeasy
19. The Commerce Clause (Continued)

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 1
The Olmstead Case
THE UNION scarcely had been formed, we have noted, by the ratification of New Hampshire in June of 1788,
before conflicts began between State and Federal authority. Such conflicts have continued, from that day to this,
as the States have struggled to maintain the role promised them under the Constitution, and the centralists of
passing generations have endeavored to wrest it from them.

The titans of American history have participated in this continuing combat. More often than not, it must be
confessed, the centralists have won and the States’ righters have lost. Over the whole span, the record
unquestionably has been one of expanding power for the Federal authority and declining influence for the
States.

Yet there is much to be learned, even in mid-twentieth century, from the conflict between State and Federal
power over the years. Many of the questions propounded by a Spencer Roane, a John C. Calhoun, a Thomas
McKean, cannot be answered satisfactorily by Federalist sympathisers to this day. These great conservatives of
the American Constitutional union captured the essence of our fundamental law; they saw, with great
prescience, the absolute necessity of preserving strong State and local governments if a despotism from
Washington were not to replace the despotism of George III. They recognized, in a way that has escaped us
now, that government is most responsive to the people when it is closest to the people; as government becomes
more remote from the sovereign power, it becomes less responsible, less susceptible to check and control.

In the brief accounts that follow, it is proposed to review several of the more notable acts in this drama. The
characters have all the color one could wish: An aging seafarer, Gideon Olmstead; an Indian murderer, Corn
Tassels; a pair of New England missionaries, Samuel Worcester and Elizur Butler; an impulsive State auditor in
Ohio, Ralph Osborn; and of course, a host of Governors, Senators, Judges, statesmen: Troup and Lumpkin in
Georgia; Desha in Kentucky; in the Congress, Webster, Hayne, Calhoun, Randolph; and on the Court, Marshall,
Taney, Chase, Fuller, Holmes, Brandeis, Stone. A more brilliant cast could not be assembled.

As the story unfolds this fact will become evident: At one time or another, every major section of the Republic
has asserted the sovereignty of States, and has resisted Federal encroachment upon State prerogatives. “States’
rights” is not a doctrine peculiar to the South. The essential rightness of the States’ position has been
acknowledged no less by New England than by Georgia; and the “Doctrine of ’98” has been asserted as
vigorously in Wisconsin as in Virginia and Kentucky.

Let us begin on a late summer night in 1778. It is September 6, and the war for American independence
continues: Yorktown is still three years away, but the tide is turning—in June, the British have evacuated
Philadelphia; the Battle of Monmouth is behind us. General Benedict Arnold, two years later a traitor, is now
military governor of Philadelphia. But New York remains in British hands, and some miles off the coast of
Pennsylvania a British sloop, Active, out of Jamaica, is pressing steadily toward her destination in Manhattan.

Aboard the Active on the night of September 6, 1778, were Gideon Olmstead, a middle-aged Connecticut sailor,
and three other countrymen who earlier had been captured by the British and taken to Jamaica. They were being
returned to New York to be put in a military prison there. But late at night, the four Americans fell upon Captain
Underwood of the Active. “In pursuance of this bold and hazardous design,” it was to be chronicled later, “they
secured the captain and crew under deck, and contemplated running the sloop into Egg Harbor,” but “a
considerable contest then arose between those under, and those on deck, for the command of the vessel.”(1) This
contest continued throughout the day on September 7. On September 8, with the sloop only a few miles out of
Egg Harbor, the brigantine Convention, Captain Thomas Houston, hove in sight and opened fire on the Active.

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Minutes later, Houston boarded the Active and took control. Meanwhile, the Convention’s consort, the privateer
sloop Le Gerard, Captain James Josiah, had come in sight and joined the engagement.

Houston sent the captured sloop on to Philadelphia, where the vessel was libelled as a prize of war on September
14. The proceeding marked the beginning of thirty years of litigation and bitter conflict between Pennsylvania
and the Federal government. To understand the position of the adversaries, it is necessary to look back briefly to
November, 1775, when the Continental Congress, at the request of Washington, had recommended to the
member States that they establish admiralty courts for handling prize cases. The act thus passed provided for
appeal to the Congress from such State proceedings, but also requested the States “to provide that all trials in
such case be had by a jury, under such qualifications as to the respective legislatures shall seem expedient.”

Pursuant to this request, the Pennsylvania Legislature set about establishing a Court of Admiralty at
Philadelphia; and on the very day after the Convention had seized the Active, before the sloop had reached port,
the Legislature adopted an act providing for jury trials in prize cases, with this qualification—that from a jury’s
finding of fact, no appeal could be taken. It was most unusual for juries to be provided in prize proceedings;
indeed, Pennsylvania’s law, in this regard, was repealed in 1780. But it happened to be the fate of Gideon
Olmstead that the Active was libelled before a new judge, in a new court, under a new and brief-lived system of
jury trial; and that the jury, on November 5, rejected his claim for the whole of the prize. It was Olmstead’s
contention that he and his mates had wholly subdued Captain Underwood at the time the Convention came
alongside; it was the position of the libellants that the struggle for command of the Active had not ceased when
Convention and Le Gerard hove in view. On this issue, the case went to the jury; and the jury, after hearing the
witnesses, gave one-fourth of the prize to Olmstead and his fellows, one-fourth to Le Gerard, and one-half to
Houston and the Convention. A half of Houston’s portion was to go to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,
which had fitted and commissioned the brig for action.

Olmstead, disappointed, appealed to Congress. In December of 1778, a four-man committee of the Congress
heard his petition and proceeded to reverse Judge Ross; the committee awarded the entire prize to Olmstead.
Pennsylvania was outraged by the decision. Had not Pennsylvania done what the Congress had asked? Had not a
State Court of Admirality been created? Had not juries been provided for? Did not Pennsylvania have the right
to provide that from her juries’ findings of fact, no appeal could be taken? With the warm support of State
authorities, Judge Ross indignantly refused to respect the committee’s decree. On December 28, he announced
that the jury’s verdict, so far as he was concerned, remained in full force. The following week, General Arnold,
equally indignant, advised Congress that Judge Ross was “standing out obstinately against any orders that may
be given.”(2) Arnold predicted, with much truth, that before Olmstead were through with the case, “he will have
the whole State to contend with,” Judge Ross continued to hold firm; and when the Congressional committee, on
January 4, issued an injunction to the marshal to detain the prize money, Judge Ross defied the committee,
requisitioned the proceeds of the auction, and distributed the award.

That was how it began. Off and on through the rest of 1779, the Congressional commissioners negotiated with
Pennsylvania, but got nowhere. In January of 1780, the Pennsylvania Legislature adopted a resolution declaring
that further efforts by Congress to obtain “the money of this State” would be considered “as a high infringement
on the honor and rights of the Commonwealth.”(3) For quite some time, the case languished. Olmstead, growing
older, continued to press his claim upon the Pennsylvania Legislature, and Pennsylvania continued to refuse
him. Meanwhile, the Articles of Confederation gave way to the new Constitution; Judge Ross died; several
hundred miles away, in New Hampshire, a wholly separate prize case, ultimately to be controlling, moved to a
head(4); in Georgia, the Chisholm case arose, and led to the Eleventh Amendment.

Fourteen years after the capture of the Active, in 1792, the persistent Olmstead filed suit in the Court of
Common Pleas of Lancaster County against Judge Ross’s executors, still seeking his prize money. By this time,
the sum had been deposited with David Rittenhouse, State Treasurer; and though Olmstead won by default in
the trial court, he lost again on subsequent appeal: Chief Justice McKean, a jurist of towering reputation whose

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views of State and Federal relationships will be reviewed somewhat later in these notes, held that “the decree of
the Committee of Appeals was contrary to the provisions of the act of Congress and of the General Assembly,
extra judicial, erroneous and void.”(5)

Three more years passed; but if the sequence of events in the Olmstead case is to be understood, it is desirable
now to look briefly toward New Hampshire and the closely parallel case which arose there. In October of 1777,
a controversy developed out of the capture of the brig Susannah by the privateer McClary. A prize suit followed,
in which a New Hampshire State Court of Admiralty awarded the proceeds to one Penhallow, owner of the
McClary, against the counter-claim of a group of Massachusetts seamen led by Elisha Doane. This judgment
was sustained on appeal to the State Supreme Court, but just as Olmstead was to do, Doane appealed to
Congress; and in September of 1783, the newly erected Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture undertook to
reverse the New Hampshire court and restore the prize to Doane. Again, State authorities resentfully spurned the
decision, and for ten years the case languished. But with a new Constitution, and new Federal courts, Doane
revived his action before the United States Circuit Court for New Hampshire. He won an order in October, 1793
directing payment of the original proceeds with interest for sixteen years.

New Hampshire, even as Pennsylvania, was outraged. In February, 1794, the New Hampshire Legislature
adopted a resolution denying emphatically that a Federal court created under the Constitution of 1788 could
reverse the decree of a New Hampshire State court in 1777. During the Revolutionary period, it was insisted,
“New Hampshire had a right to pass a law final in every way concerning the capture of vessels by this State, or
citizens thereof, from the British.”(6) After all, said the resolution, the States are forbidden by the new
Constitution to make retrospective laws: “The Legislature conceived that Congress was under the same
obligations; and that their courts could not re judge cases that were finally adjudged by courts existing prior to
its adoption.” In New Hampshire’s view, the Congress that existed under the Articles of Confederation “was
merely an advisory body.” The States were separate and autonomous; and an effort to unsettle the proceedings
of the States prior to the ratification of the Constitution “will inevitably involve the States . . . in confusion, and
will weaken, if not perhaps destroy, the National Government.” Terming the Federal Court’s decree an “illegal
act of power,” New Hampshire protested strongly against it.

The protest was unavailing. In February, 1795, the United States Supreme Court held that Federal courts created
under the new Constitution could, indeed, review decisions of the old Court of Appeals in Cases of Capture. The
decision is an important one. Speaking for the Court, Justice Paterson rejected the position urged by New
Hampshire: “The truth is, that the States, individually, were not known nor recognized as sovereign, by foreign
nations, nor are they now; the States collectively, under Congress, as the connecting point, or head, were
acknowledged by foreign powers as sovereign.” Somewhat vaguely, he continued: “Before Articles of
Confederation were ratified, or even formed, a league of some kind subsisted among the States; and whether that
league originated in compact, or a sort of tacit consent, resulting from the situation, the exigencies of the times,
and the nature of the warfare, or from a combination, is utterly immaterial.”(7)

It is difficult to follow Paterson in his reasoning. The States were, in fact, “recognized as sovereign” by the
highest possible authority—the authority of Great Britain, in the treaty ending the war. They were recognized,
individually, not as one nation, but rather as entities. They had declared themselves, in 1776, to be “Free and
Independent States.” Mr. Justice Iredell, dissenting, emphasized some of these points: Each of the States, or
provinces, he said, was a separate body politic, “and the several provinces were not otherwise connected with
each other than as being subject to the same common sovereign.”(8)

Citizens of the different States were as foreigners to one another. They had formed themselves into different
States, and as States had conveyed “by each body politic separately, and not by all the people in the several
provinces, or States, jointly.”(9) Thus, in Iredell’s view, what New Hampshire had done in 1777 was peculiarly
the business of New Hampshire, and no longer subject to review.

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But the majority of the Court prevailed. New Hampshire again protested strongly, and her second remonstrance,
of January 16, 1795, merits quotation for twentieth century readers. Do these views sound familiar? The New
Hampshire legislators, again remonstrating against “a violation of State independence and an unwarrantable
encroachment in the courts of the United States,” declared that the attempts “repeatedly made to render the laws
of this State . . . null and void [are] a flagrant insult to the principle of the Revolution. . . .” Then the resolution
asked:

Can the rage for annihilating all the power of the States, and reducing this extensive and flourishing country to
one domination make the administrators blind to the danger of violating all the principles of our former
government, to the hazard of convulsions, in endeavoring to eradicate every trace of State power, except in the
resentment of the people. . . .

Forced by events, the Legislature of New Hampshire have made the foregoing statements; and while they
cheerfully acknowledge the power of Congress in cases arising under the Constitution, they equally resolve not
to submit the laws made before the existence of the present government by this (then independent State) to the
adjudication of any power on earth, while the freedom of the Federal Government shall afford any constitutional
means of redress. Impressed with the singular merits of the present case, and deprecating the many and
complicated evils which must be the necessary consequence of establishing the power claimed by the courts of
the United States, and its tendency to produce disaffection to our government, the Legislature of New
Hampshire rest assured that a speedy and just decision will be had, and that the rights of State Governments and
the interests of their citizens will be secured against the exercise of a power of a court, or any body of men under
Congress, of carrying into effect an unconstitutional decree of a court instituted by a former Congress, and
which, in its effects, would unsettle property and tear up the laws of the several States.

Thus spoke New Hampshire, but Congress and the Court were deaf. Back in Connecticut, however, Olmstead
took heart. Hoping to emulate Doane’s success, he dug out of his sea chest the records of his suit in 1792, and in
1802 filed a new proceeding in the United States District Court at Philadelphia, this time against Elizabeth
Sergeant and Esther Waters, daughters and executrices of the late State Treasurer, David Rittenhouse. In
January, 1803, Judge Peters ruled in Olmstead’s favor, but prudently declined to issue process until the matter
could be reviewed once more by the Supreme Court of the United States.

This time it was the Pennsylvania Legislature’s turn to take action. In the summer of 1803, it pronounced this
Federal opinion “null and void,” but prudently arranged for Mrs. Sergeant and Mrs. Waters to pay into the State
Treasury the contested sum. Five more years elapsed before Olmstead, by now an old man, set in motion the
final chain of events: Through the United States Attorney General, he applied for a mandamus against Judge
Peters, compelling issuance of process for a judgment he had won almost thirty years earlier; to this, the judge
replied that Pennsylvania had passed an act to protect the Rittenhouse executrices against the process of any
Federal court in the Olmstead case; that he was unwilling to embroil the United States with Pennsylvania; and
that he wished the Supreme Court itself to take the responsibility.

Chief Justice John Marshall took it: “If the legislatures of the several States,” he said “may at will annul the
judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the right acquired under these judgments, the
Constitution becomes a solemn mockery, and the nation is deprived of the means of enforcing its laws by the
instrumentality of its own tribunals.”(10) The act passed by Pennsylvania, he noted, did not assert “the universal
right of the State to interpose in every case whatever.” What Pennsylvania had done was to question the Federal
court’s jurisdiction on two grounds: First, that the old Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, had no
authority to reverse the original finding of fact by a jury in Judge Ross’ Admiralty Court in 1778, with the result
that the case had been finally settled many years before; and secondly, that Olmstead, as a citizen of
Connecticut, could not, under the new Eleventh Amendment, bring suit against Pennsylvania. Marshall brushed
off the first objection by saying that the Penhallow case had settled that issue; of the second, he insisted that
Pennsylvania was not actually a party to the suit—the defendants were Mrs. Sergeant and Mrs. Waters: “It is

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deemed perfectly clear that no title whatever to the certificates in question was vested in the State of
Pennsylvania.”

Marshall’s opinion aroused an astonishingly bitter reaction in Pennsylvania. It is a little difficult, looking back,
to understand why this should have been true. The amount in controversy was not large; the right of a State jury
to hear prize cases had been abandoned in 1780, two years after it had been created; by 1809, of course, all
questions of Revolutionary prizes were moot; the main point in Marshall’s opinion—that Federal courts under
the new Constitution could dispose of cases heard by the Prize Court many years earlier—established no
dangerous precedent for the future. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania reacted strongly.

On February 27, 1809, Governor Simon Snyder advised the Legislature that he intended to call out the State
militia to protect Mrs. Sergeant and Mrs. Waters against the service of process. His firmness was warmly
approved, and when late in March the writ finally was issued, and Marshal John Smith went to the Rittenhouse
mansion at Seventh and Arch streets to serve the papers, a delegation of the Pennsylvania militia awaited him.
They had been called out on orders of Governor Snyder addressed to General Michael Bright, commander of the
First Brigade, First Division. “It is my express orders,” Governor Snyder had said, “not to injure any person
attempting to serve such process as aforesaid, unless imperious necessity compels you to do it in execution of
the orders it has become my duty to issue.” Nevertheless, General Bright was to see to it that the ladies were
protected.

Let Marshal Smith tell the story: On March 25, he went to Mrs. Sergeant’s house, but “Upon my approach a
sentinel who was placed at the door presented his bayonet at my breast.” When he attempted to get past Sergeant
Cole and his detachment, “I was driven from the pavement . . . and was repelled by the whole guard with
charged bayonets.”(11) Marshal Smith then called for a chair, and when this was provided, hoisted himself upon
it to read a proclamation to the assembled crowd. He lectured them on the subject of Federal authority, promised
to summon a posse of two thousand men if need be, and then retired.

For three weeks, General Bright’s detachment held “Fort Rittenhouse,” but at last Marshal Smith eluded the
guard. “I got into the house,” he was to testify, “went into the back parlour, where I saw two young ladies and
young gentlemen, who were exceedingly alarmed.” But doing his duty as he saw it, the marshal served his
papers and departed.

Scarcely had this obligation been fulfilled before United States District Attorney Alexander J. Dallas swore out
a warrant against General Bright and his troops, charging them with obstructing justice. On April 28, they came
on for trial in Philadelphia before Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington and District Judge Richard
Peters. Meanwhile, on April 3, the Pennsylvania Legislature had adopted certain resolutions that will be noted
hereafter, and had appropriated $18,000 to Governor Snyder’s discretion as a fund for settling the case.

It was a curiously Wonderland trial that unfolded in Philadelphia that spring. Reading the record, one is
reminded of Alice’s hedgehog, that kept unrolling itself and wandering away. General Bright, for one thing, did
not bother to show up to hear the indictment read. When Dallas asked the court to be patient, waiting on him,
Judge Peters put in a wary remark: “The defendants are bound in a recognizance to appear and not depart the
court without license; but I do not want to hurry on the trial. I am content for my own part to wait still longer on
this business, though God knows it has been so long before me I am tired of it.” Eventually General Bright
showed up—a bailiff had been sent to the docks to find him, where the general was engaged as inspector of
flour for the port of Philadelphia—and all hands pleaded not guilty. A jury then was sworn, and counsel for the
government and the defense launched into long and absorbing reviews of the powers of Federal and State
authorities.

It was the government’s position that Pennsylvania’s interposition should be ignored altogether: If Judge Peters’
original order were void, the action of the Pennsylvania Legislature was needless; if his order were valid,

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Pennsylvania’s action could not make it less so. It was the position of the defense that Pennsylvania had acted
throughout in defense of her sovereign rights, and that General Bright was wholly within the State’s authority in
interceding against an arbitrary and unconstitutional action by the marshal. On this division, the case went to
trial.

Mr. Justice Washington had a difficult jury to contend with. Never a specially shrewd or knowledgeable man, he
delivered a charge in which he argued obtusely with himself. He noted that the Eleventh Amendment prohibited
suits “in law and equity” by citizens of one State against another State. Could he, as a member of the Supreme
Court, interpret this prohibition also to apply to cases in admiralty? “I think not. In our various struggles to get at
the spirit and intention of the framers of the Constitution, I fear that this invaluable charter of our rights would,
in a very little time, be entirely construed away, and become at length so disfigured that its founders would
recollect very few of its original features.” It was a comment of singular prophecy. But Mr. Justice Washington
wondered also about the right of Pennsylvania to pass upon judgments of a Federal court and declare them null
and void: “Could such a power be granted to them, without sapping the foundations of the government, and
extinguishing the last sparks of American liberty?” Mr. Justice Washington thought not, but his confusion was
evident to the jury. He had asked them, sarcastically, if “they have the vanity to think themselves wiser than all
those who have passed opinions upon this important question of the law?” and finally he had suggested to the
jury that “If there is any misapprehension, or difficulty about the law, the court are ready now, or will be at any
time hereafter, to give any further information, or elucidation, you may require.” To this offer, the record shows
this response:

One of the jurors: We seem to want no information on this head, for there are three or four jurors who think they
understand the law as well as the judges themselves.

The jury went out between five and six o’clock on the evening of Saturday, April 30. After supper, the clerk
summoned them back to the court to inquire if they had reached a verdict. “One of the jurors said they had not,
and he saw no prospect that they ever would, and therefore hoped they might be discharged.” Instead,
Washington ordered them back to the jury room. At ten-thirty they came back in, but mainly to report that “one
of the jurors has had a strong convulsion fit, and another was very much indisposed.” Washington ordered them
locked up over the weekend. On Sunday afternoon, it was to develop later, one of the jurors, Mathias Corless,
slipped out the back door of the court house at Sixth and Chestnut streets, and merrily made his way across to
the Shakespeare Hotel, a tavern, intent on a cooling drink.

On Monday morning, the jury reluctantly brought in a verdict finding General Bright and his soldiers guilty, but
with so many mitigating circumstances that no decree could be readily reduced to writing. It was the jury’s view
that the defendants had not opposed “Any law of the United States acknowledged to be so by the military
authority of Pennsylvania.” After considerable argument, a decree was agreed upon, and Justice Washington
sentenced General Bright to three months in jail and a fine of $200, and each of his eight soldiers to one month
in jail and a fine of $50. That was on May 2, 1809. Four days later, President Madison, commenting upon the
court’s finding that the defendants had acted under “a mistaken sense of duty,” pardoned all of them. So ended
the trial of General Bright.

But if the trial proved a short-lived fiasco, some of the things said by the Pennsylvania Assembly in its April
resolution merit a more permanent place. This is Pennsylvania speaking, let it be noted—Pennsylvania, no part
of the South, in a time when Pennsylvania felt keenly about her own State rights:

And whereas the causes and reasons which have produced this conflict between the general and State
government should be made known, not only that the State may be justified to her sister States, who are equally
interested in the preservation of the State rights; but to evince to the Government of the United States that the
Legislature, in resisting encroachments on their rights, are not acting in a spirit of hostility to the legitimate
powers of the United States courts; but are actuated by a disposition to compromise, and to guard against future

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collisions of power, by an amendment to the Constitution; and that, whilst they are contending for the rights of
the State, that it will be attributed to a desire for preserving the Federal government itself, the best features of
which must depend upon keeping up a just balance between the general and State governments, as guaranteed
by the Constitution,

Be it therefore known, that the present unhappy dispute has arisen out of the following circumstances. . . .(12)

And Pennsylvania thereupon proceeded to spell out her case. In one aspect, it was a good and sound case. “It is
clear,” said the resolution, “that David Rittenhouse could not have received a farthing of the money as David
Rittenhouse, but as Treasurer of the State only, and by order of the State.” Hence it was, in actual fact, the State
itself that was being sued, in violation of the Eleventh Amendment. “If this can be done, the amendment . . . is a
dead letter. The State can act under its laws only by its agents. Its moneys remain in the hands of its Treasurers.
If the officers can be converted by the decree of a judge, into mere stakeholders, there can, perhaps, be no
possible case in which the Constitution may not be invaded.”(13)

Then Pennsylvania had this to say, and let it be read in the context of the mid-twentieth century:

Although the Legislature reverence the Constitution of the United States and its lawful authorities, yet there is a
respect due to the solemn and public acts, and to the honor and dignity of our own State, and the unvarying
assertion of her right, for a period of thirty years, which right ought not to be relinquished. . . .

An assertion of right for a period of thirty years. May a question be interpolated? What do the good people of
Pennsylvania say today of a State right asserted unvaryingly for a period of nearly ninety years? Is this not
entitled to respect? Pennsylvania once thought so.

And the resolution of April 3, 1809, went on to say other things worth repeating today. The Legislature of
Pennsylvania acknowledged the supremacy of the general government, and cheerfully submitted to its authority
“so far as that authority is delegated by the Constitution of the United States.” But beyond that point?

Whilst they yield to this authority, when exercised within Constitutional limits, they trust they will not be
considered as acting hostile to the General Government, when, as guardians of the State rights, they can not
permit an infringement of those rights by an unconstitutional exercise of power in the United States’ courts.
[Emphasis in the original.]

Again let it be noted: Here was the old and rightly respected State of Pennsylvania, declaring in the most solemn
fashion, that the “United States’ courts” themselves violate the Constitution. Is it so unthinkable that
Pennsylvania could have been right then, and that Southern and Southwestern States are equally right in making
identical assertions in our own time?

The April resolution went on to recognize that “it is impossible” for a boundary to be marked precisely between
“the powers granted to the general government, and rights reserved to the States.” Difficulties were bound to
arise “from a collision of powers.” And because the Constitution had made no provision for determining such
disputes, the Pennsylvania Legislature proposed that a new tribunal be created by constitutional amendment.
Otherwise, “the harmony of the States, if they resist encroachments on their rights, will frequently be
interrupted.” And if the States, to prevent the evil, “should on all occasions yield to stretches of power, the
reserved rights of the States will depend on the arbitrary power of the courts.” Therefore, it was

Resolved, that should the independence of the States, as secured by the Constitution, be destroyed, the liberties
of the people in so extensive a country cannot long survive. To suffer the United States’ courts to decide on
STATE RIGHTS will, from a bias in favor of power, necessarily destroy the FEDERAL PART of our

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Government: And whenever the government of the United States becomes consolidated, we may learn from the
history of nations what will be the event.(14) [Emphasis in the original.]

Pause for a moment. Let us note the language. Pennsylvania, in April of 1809, was speaking: Should the States
keep yielding to usurpations of power by the Federal courts, the rights of the States would be swept away. Is that
not precisely what has happened in our own time? By failing to resist judicial encroachments, the States have
indeed seen their rights one by one swept away, as the United States have become more consolidated and the
liberties of the people more inexorably infringed.

That is about all that remains to be said of the Olmstead case. On April 17, 1809, some ten days before General
Bright went on trial, counsel for Mrs. Sergeant had applied for a writ of habeas corpus to free her from the
marshal’s custody. Chief Justice Tilghman, of the Pennsylvania court, concluded that he had power to free her
from Federal custody, if the evidence justified him in doing so: His right to issue a writ “flows from the nature
of our Federal Constitution, which leaves to the several States absolute supremacy in all cases in which it is not
yielded to the United States.”(15) “The United States have no power, legislative or judicial, except what is
derived from the Constitution,” Chief Justice Tilghman said.

When these powers are clearly exceeded, the independence of the States, and the peace of the Union, demand
that the State courts should, in cases brought properly before them, give redress. There is no law which forbids
it; their oath of office exacts it, and, if they do not, what course is to be taken? We must be reduced to the
miserable extremity of opposing force to force, and arraying citizen against citizen; for it is vain to expect that
the States will submit to manifest and flagrant usurpations of power by the United States, if (which God forbid)
they should attempt them.

Nevertheless, Judge Tilghman regretfully held that Federal authority had been exercised properly, and refused to
release Mrs. Sergeant. At long last, on April 26, Governor Snyder released the contested sum to Olmstead.

The following January of 1810, it must be confessed to Virginia’s shame, the General Assembly at Richmond
adopted resolutions that were far removed from her resolutions of 1798 and 1799. This time, replying to
Pennsylvania’s resolution of 1809, the Virginia Assembly declared that the Supreme Court of the United States
had been provided “to decide disputes between the State and Federal judiciary,” and Virginia praised the
Supreme Court judges as men “selected from those in the United States who are most celebrated for virtue and
legal learning.”(16) The duties they have to perform, said Virginia then, “lead them necessarily to the most
enlarged and accurate acquaintance with the jurisdiction of the Federal and several State courts together, and
with the admirable symmetry of our government.” Further, “the tenure of their offices enables them to
pronounce the sound and correct opinions they may have formed, without fear, favor, or partiality.” In time, it
may be interpolated, Virginia’s view on this score was to change radically.

To this resolution from Virginia, Pennsylvania put in the last word on February 3, 1810. A committee report was
brought forward in the State Senate declaring flatly that

the committee are of opinion, that the Constitution of the United States has been violated by the decision of the
judge, and the constitutional rights of the State invaded. The question then occurs, in what manner is a State to
defend her rights against such invasion? It has already been observed, that the Constitution of the United States
guarantees to each State a republican form of government; that the powers not delegated to the United States are
reserved to the States respectively. Without entering into a detail of the rights reserved or not delegated, suffice
it to say that “the right of acquiring, possessing and protecting property” is one. If this be not one of the powers
not delegated, then indeed a State is in a worse and more degraded situation than the most obscure individual,
whose property cannot be taken from him when fairly acquired, without his consent, even for publick use,
without compensation. . . .

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It may be asked, who is to decide the question? If it be alleged that the State has not the right, it may justly be
replied, the power invading it, has not. It is a case unprovided for in the Constitution, and there is no common
umpire. . . . [Emphasis supplied.]

There remains “no common umpire.” By every rule of sound common sense and rightful Constitutional
construction, it is the States themselves, parties to the compact, who should decide, in the last resort, if their
compact has been violated. To leave such arbitraments to an agency of the Federal government, even as
Jefferson and Madison made clear, is to substitute the discretion of the agent for the will of the principals; and it
is to make the decision of a court, rather than the Constitution as agreed upon by the States, the supreme law of
the land.

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 2
The Case of the Lands of Lord Fairfax
IN CHRONICLING some of the more spirited conflicts between State and Federal authority, necessarily one
must place first emphasis upon the resistance by State legislatures and State governors. To this day lawmakers
and chief executives speak in less inhibited fashion than judges, in protesting usurpation of power by the
Supreme Court of the United States.

Yet it is important to note that the States frequently have interposed their sovereign powers through their own
judiciary. As early as 1791, it was noted earlier, North Carolina’s Supreme Court bluntly refused to comply with
a Federal court order attempting to transfer a case from State to Federal jurisdiction.(17)

But it was in Pennsylvania, in 1798, that the position of the State judiciary was expounded at length for the first
time. The expounder was one of the most remarkable jurists of the early years of our country, the redoubtable
Judge Thomas McKean.

He was born in 1734; he rose to manhood in the turbulent decades of revolution against Great Britain; he was a
signer of the Declaration of Independence. For several years, he held the remarkable distinction of occupying
public office simultaneously in two States—as Assemblyman and later Congressman from Delaware, and as
Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. Toward the middle of the 1780’s, however, he settled permanently in
Philadelphia, and took an active part in the Pennsylvania Convention of 1787, by urging adoption of the new
Constitution. Never at a loss for a well-turned phrase, he there compared the arguments of those who opposed
the Constitution to “the feeble noise occasioned by the working of small beer.”(18) An active and partisan
Federalist, he nevertheless reserved strong apprehensions against excessive power in the Federal government.
These apprehensions burst forth in 1798, when he wrote the unanimous opinion of his court denying a petition
filed by one William Cobbet in a certain libel proceeding.(19)

This was a criminal case, in which the defendant Cobbet had been placed under bond as a common libeller.
When he continued his libelous publications, an action was instituted against him. Cobbet pleaded that he was
an alien, a subject of Great Britain, and demanded that his case be removed for trial into the United States
Circuit Court. Counsel for the Commonwealth argued that to grant such a motion “would prostrate the authority
of the individual States.” The mischief that had been apprehended prior to the Eleventh Amendment, in allowing
States to be sued in the Supreme Court, would be recreated by allowing them to be forced into the Circuit courts.

Chief Justice McKean and his associates unanimously rejected Cobbet’s petition; and what McKean had to
say(20) merits quotation at some length.

“Our system of government,” said Chief Justice McKean, “seems to me to differ, in form and spirit, from all
other governments that have heretofore existed in the world.” Following the reasoning of Madison in the
Federalist(21) and in the Virginia Convention of 1788,(22) McKean found the Union “as to some particulars
national, in others Federal, and in all the residue territorial, or in districts called States.” Continuing, he said:

The division of power between the national, Federal, and State governments (all derived from the same source,
the authority of the people) must be collected from the Constitution of the United States. Before it was adopted,
the several States had absolute and unlimited sovereignty within their respective boundaries; all the powers,
legislative, executive and judicial, excepting those granted to Congress under the old Constitution. They now
enjoy them all, excepting such as are granted to the government of the United States by the present instrument
and the adopted amendments, which are for particular purposes only.

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The government of the United States forms a part of the government of each State; its jurisdiction extends to the
providing for the common defense against exterior injuries and violence, the regulation of commerce, and other
matters specially enumerated in the Constitution; all other powers remain in the individual States,
comprehending the interior and other concerns. These combined, form one complete government.

Should there be any defect in this form of government, or any collision occur, it cannot be remedied by the sole
act of the Congress or the State; the people must be resorted to, for enlargement or modification. If a State
should differ with the United States about the construction of them, there is no common umpire but the people,
who should adjust the affair by making amendments in the constitutional way, or suffer from the defect. . . .

There is no provision in the Constitution, that in such a case the judges of the Supreme Court of the United
States shall control and be conclusive; neither can the Congress by a law confer that power. There appears to be
a defect in this matter. . . .

As events proved, of course, the remedy—if it was a remedy—was found in John Marshall’s bold assertions of
power. It is here contended that the defect described by McKean more than one hundred fifty years ago remains
a major defect to this day.

The Cobbet case is important in part because it was cited at length in the next major contest that arose between
State and Federal judiciaries—the prolonged litigation in Virginia over the lands of Lord Fairfax. The case
began in 1796, and did not end until 1816. Things moved at a far more leisurely pace in those days. The suit was
enormously complicated. It will suffice for our purposes to note that a contest arose involving the validity of a
grant made by the General Assembly of Virginia in 1789 to one David Hunter. The land conveyed was a part of
the vast holding that earlier (in 1736) had been granted by the English crown to Thomas Lord Fairfax. It was
contended by the heirs of Lord Fairfax that Virginia’s grant to Hunter was prohibited by the terms of the treaty
of 1783 which ended the Revolutionary war. It was contended by Hunter, as plaintiff, that the State grant was
wholly valid. On the question, so drawn, the trial court at Winchester ruled in favor of the Fairfax heirs, but on
appeal, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals reversed the trial court and found for Hunter.(23) It was a split
decision. Judge Fleming felt the treaty of 1783 had some effect, but on balance he felt title should go to Hunter.
Judge Roane felt the treaty had nothing to do with the case, and he too felt title should go to Hunter.

But the heirs appealed, and in 1813 the Supreme Court of the United States reversed the Virginia Supreme Court
and ordered the judgment of the Winchester court affirmed.(24) Now, that was not the first time the Supreme
Court of the United States had reversed a State court, and it is not clear why this case, above all cases, should
have “excited all that attention from the bench and bar which its great importance truly merited.”(25) The fact is
that the Supreme Court’s action did stir great resentment; and matters were not helped by a tactlessly worded
mandate which “hereby commanded” that further proceedings be had agreeable to the judgment and instructions
of the Supreme Court.

Six days were consumed in argument before the Virginia Supreme Court on the disposition of this mandate.
What the Virginia court had to say is set forth fully in the old reports. It still has meaning today. Judge Cabell
led off: “My investigations,” he said, “have terminated in the conviction that the Constitution of the United
States does not warrant the power which the act of Congress”—that was the Judiciary Act of 1789”—purports to
confer on the Federal judiciary.” He went on to lay down, precisely and cogently, the essential separation of
powers for which Virginians are contending to this very day. He said:

To the Federal government are confided certain powers, specially enumerated, and principally affecting our
foreign relations and the general interest of the nation. These powers are limited, not only by their special
enumeration, but by the positive declaration that all powers not enumerated or not prohibited to the States, are
reserved to the States, or to the people.

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The Tenth Amendment, it will be seen, still had some meaning then.

Cabell continued:

This demarcation of power is not vain and ineffectual. The free exercise by the States of the powers reserved to
them is as much sanctioned and guarded by the Constitution of the United States as is the free exercise, by the
Federal government, of the powers delegated to that government. If either be impaired, the system is deranged.
The two governments, therefore, possessing each its portion of the divided sovereignty, although embracing the
same territory, and operating on the same persons, and frequently on the same subjects, are nevertheless separate
from, and independent of, each other . . . The Constitution of the United States contemplates the independence
of both governments, and regards the residuary sovereignty of the States as not less inviolable than the delegated
sovereignty of the United States.

Then Cabell went on to echo what McKean had said in the Cobbet case, what Jefferson and Calhoun were to say
later:

It must have been foreseen that controversies would sometimes arise as to the boundaries of the two
jurisdictions. Yet the Constitution has provided no umpire., has erected no tribunal by which they shall be
settled. [Emphasis supplied.]

Why was no such tribunal provided to settle disputes between the States and the Federal government the States
mutually had created? Cabell thought that probably the omission proceeded from the belief “that such a tribunal
would produce evils greater than those of the occasional collisions which it would be designed to remedy.” But
in any event, he observed, “to give to the general government, or any of its departments, a direct and controlling
operation upon the State departments, as such, would be to change at once the whole character of our system.”
The result, he said, would be this: “The independence of the State authorities would be extinguished, and a
superiority, unknown to the Constitution, would be created, which would sooner or later terminate in an entire
consolidation of the States into one complete national sovereignty.” It was a prophetic remark.

Judge Cabell turned to the nature of the State and Federal judiciaries. Suppose the Virginia Supreme Court
should comply with this “command” from the Supreme Court of the United States? The Virginia judges, in
doing so, “must act either as Federal or as State judges.” But they could not be made Federal judges without
their consent, or without commissions. So they were not Federal judges. Thus they remained State judges. But
how could they, as State judges, be required “to enter up a judgment, not our own, but dictated and prescribed to
us by another court”? Obviously, they must act either ministerially or judicially—but no one contended that the
Supreme Court of the United States had any authority to convert State judges into mere ministerial agents.
Could the Virginia court, then, act judicially? Cabell thought not.

Before one court can dictate to another the judgment it shall pronounce, it must bear to that other the relation of
an appellate court. The term appellate, however, necessarily includes the idea of superiority. But one court
cannot be correctly said to be superior to another, unless both of them belong to the same sovereignty. It would
be a misapplication of terms to say that a court of Virginia is superior to a court of Maryland, or vice versa. The
courts of the United States, therefore, belonging to one sovereignty, cannot be appellate courts in relation to the
State courts, which belong to a different sovereignty—and of course, their commands or instructions impose no
obligation. [Emphasis in the original.]

Cabell argued that to admit this appellate jurisdiction would be to place the State courts “at the feet of the
Federal courts, and make them the unwilling instruments of their usurpation of State rights.” He would have no
part of it.

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Justice Brooke then took up the argument. He harked back to the Virginia Resolution of 1798, in commenting
that “the right to resist infractions of the Federal Constitution, proceeding from the general government, or any
department thereof, has been solemnly asserted in Virginia.” The twenty-fifth section of the Judiciary Act, he
declared flatly, was unconstitutional; the Virginia court should refuse obedience to the mandate.

Next, Judge Spencer Roane leaped into the fray. He had been sitting back too long, fidgeting, waiting upon his
colleagues. He denounced the idea that State courts could be made arms of the Federal judiciary simply because
“in the course of their ordinary jurisdiction, [they] incidentally acted upon the Constitution, laws or treaties of
the United States.” He found this “a circumstance which would equally make the Supreme Court of Calcutta a
part of the judicial system of the United States, when enforcing the laws of this country and that.” Striking at
John Marshall, he declared that the Supreme Court had “gained ground by piece-meal,” that its assertions of
power were “at war with the idea of limited and specified powers in the general government.” Then he quoted at
some length from the Cobbet case, and wound up in this fashion:

Upon the whole, I am of the opinion that the Constitution confers no power upon the Supreme Court of the
United States to meddle with the judgments of this court in the case before us . . . and that this court is both at
liberty and is bound, to follow its own convictions on the subject, anything in the decisions, or supposed
decisions, of any other court, to the contrary notwithstanding.

It remained only for Judge Fleming to concur with his brothers. Together, they joined in a unanimous opinion
“that the appellate power of the Supreme Court of the United States does not extend to this court, under a sound
construction of the Constitution of the United States . . . and that obedience to its mandate be declined by this
court.”

Happily or unhappily—men will disagree on the point—the case then went back to Story and Marshall, and in
1816 Mr. Justice Story made the Supreme Court’s opinion stick.(26) It had been a wonderful fight, as they say,
while it lasted. There are many Americans, not thought of as devout men, who pray earnestly that one day the
fight may be resumed.

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 3
The Embargo Crisis
THE INTERPOSITION of Pennsylvania in the Olmstead case, and Virginia’s spirited resistance in the Fairfax
suit, coincided with massive resistance by other States to Federal authority on a matter of far greater importance.
In a brief chronicle of the Embargo Crisis, and the measures of the New England States against the embargo
laws, may be found some notable precedents for the resistance of Southern States to unconstitutional decrees in
our own time. It will be seen that Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island once equally cherished their
State powers as they conceived them; they, too, interposed to arrest the progress of what seemed to them a
deliberate, palpable, and dangerous evil. It will be recalled that the war between France and England, which
erupted with such fury following the Reign of Terror in the spring and summer of 1793, subsided for a time in
the closing years of the century. But in 1803, when sale of the Louisiana Territory enriched Napoleon’s treasury,
the conflict broke out anew. Before the end of 1804, Napoleon had crowned himself emperor at Notre Dame; in
May of 1805, at Milan, he placed upon his head the iron crown of the old Lombard kings. Great Britain, Russia
and Austria, breathing new life into their Triple Alliance of 1795, arrayed themselves against him, but the
conquering Napoleon swept onward: Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar in October of 1805 was more than offset by
Austria’s defeat at Ulm that same month, and by Napoleon’s triumph at Austerlitz in December. By mid-
summer of 1806, German opposition to Napoleon had all but collapsed; in the fall, the victorious French dealt
the Prussians a cruel blow at Jena.

Napoleon accompanied these conquests by land with harsh measures at sea, and it is with these that the young
United States were most deeply concerned. By his “decrees” at Paris and Berlin, and late in 1807 at Milan,
Napoleon undertook to impose a strong blockade against Britain. To these impositions, Britain responded with
equally stringent decrees of her own. The effect of the British pronouncements, backed by the Royal Navy in its
greatest hour, was virtually to deny the seas to neutral nations.

The United States, under Jefferson, at first responded feebly to the insults of the belligerent powers. In view of
the sharp division of political sentiment, perhaps no more could have been expected: The Federalists, loving
Britain and hating France, were in many quarters almost equally arrayed against the Republicans, loving France
and hating Britain. To the Federalists, Napoleon embodied worldwide French imperialism in a way that Stalin,
nearly one hundred fifty years later, was to embody the menace of Soviet conquest. Yet to the Republicans, the
hypothetical threat of French domination was subordinate to the reality of British humiliations. These sentiments
of high politics on the part of the Federalists, as is so often the case, reflected less lofty considerations of
commerce: Trade with Britain was the lifeblood of New England. That blood was being drained away.

In the summer of 1807, the balance of national sentiment tipped against Britain in the outrageous affair of the
Chesapeake, an American vessel halted by the British Leopard and contemptuously boarded by British sailors.
For the first time, Republican measures against Britain began to gain widespread support; and on December 18,
1807, a month after new British decrees were imposed against neutral trade, Jefferson asked Congress for an
embargo against all shipping. Four days later, the Embargo Act was law.

For the space of a month or so, even parts of New England went along. The Massachusetts General Court, which
soon was to level against Jefferson the spirit of States’ rights he himself had advanced in the Kentucky
Resolutions just ten years earlier, at first praised the embargo as “a wise and highly expedient measure, . . .
calculated to secure to us the blessings of peace.”(27) In Southern States, though the embargo would hurt them
gravely also, hostility to the British gave support to Jefferson’s plan.

But the first Embargo Act of December, 1807, was followed by supplementary laws in January and March of
1808, and finally by the severe law of April 25, which authorized the President to detain all coasting vessels

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upon suspicion of intent to evade the embargo. With this last enactment, New England revived her bitter
resentment. Two years earlier, when Congress had adopted a non-importation act to prohibit the admission of
British products, the people of New England had rendered it ineffective by widespread smuggling. Now this
smuggling trade was defiantly expanded, especially in Vermont and New Hampshire. On Lake Champlain and
in Passamaquoddy Bay, all along the St. Lawrence, and from Newport, Portland, Nantucket, and Martha’s
Vineyard, smugglers actively plied their trade.(28) To these measures of the resentful people, the State
governments added official harassments of their own. During the summer of 1808, Rhode Island actively
interposed through her judiciary, when State courts at Newport effectively prevented detention of vessels under
the April enactment. In August, New York’s Governor Tompkins coldly refused to assist a Federal collector at
Oswego who sought help in enforcing the embargo regulations.

Throughout the autumn, members of Congress from New England States continued strenuously to assert the
unconstitutionality of the Embargo Acts. Across the seas, the hated Napoleon, his tide of empire not yet turned,
swept triumphantly into Madrid and turned his eyes toward Rome. And as American vessels swung idly at
anchor in New England harbors, a spirit of secession began to kindle among a rebellious people.(29)

In the light of that brief and oversimplified chronology, it is useful now to turn to the resolutions of the various
State legislatures in the early months of 1809. The Southern States of today, interposing their sovereign powers
in another cause, may perhaps be forgiven a gentle reminder to old friends north of the Potomac: This,
gentlemen, is what you said then.

Delaware came first, on January 30, 1809. The Embargo Acts (and especially the new “Force Act” just signed
by Jefferson on January 9) were “an invasion of the liberty of the people and [of] the constitutional sovereignty
of the State governments.” And while Delaware would submit to “unwise and arbitrary laws, rather than resort
to violence,” Delaware would seek every constitutional remedy that could be found for the evils under which her
people suffered.(30)

Then Massachusetts. The Lieutenant Governor, Levi Lincoln, an ardent follower of Jefferson, having succeeded
to the chief magistracy on the Governor’s death, sent to the Legislature a message deprecating Federalist
agitation against the laws of the land and asking an end to opposition. To this address, both Senate and House
responded with ringing statements. These merit attention in our own not less turbulent time.

The government of the Union, said the Massachusetts Senate then, “is a confederation of equal and independent
States with limited powers.” The Senate agreed, of course, with a comment by Governor Lincoln that while
measures “are pending and ripening” in Congress, the States have every right to question the justness or policy
of any proposal.” But do State rights end there? Governor Lincoln thought so. The Senate did not. Its resolution
observed:

. . . we learn with concern from your Honour, that there are stages when questions involving unalienable
rights—“can be no longer open to controversy and opposition”—“stages when an end must be put to debate and
a decision then resulting be respected by its prompt and faithful execution, or government loses its existence and
the people are ruined.” . . . We owe it to ourselves and to the people distinctly to deny this doctrine, at once
novel and pernicious.(31)

A distinction must be drawn, said the Senate, between the respect that is owed to valid laws, and the respect that
cannot be required of the people for laws “unwarranted by the commission given to their rulers.” In this case,
the people manifestly regarded the Embargo Acts as a usurpation of their most cherished liberties. What, then,
was the duty of the General Court? “The people have not sent us here to surrender their rights, but to maintain
and defend them.”

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The Massachusetts House also responded warmly to Governor Lincoln’s assertion that a time had come to end
objection and opposition to a distasteful law:

We cannot agree with your Honour that in a free country there is any stage at which the constitutionality of an
act may no longer be open to discussion and debate; at least it is only upon the high road to despotism that such
stages can be found.

At such a point the Government, undertaking to extend its powers beyond the limits of the Constitution,
degenerates into tyranny.(32)

It may be inquired, perhaps, by this citizen of Virginia who offers these notes for public review, if there be any
essential difference between an unconstitutional decree by a court, and an unconstitutional enactment by its
separate but equal branch of the Federal government? The paragraph that follows from the resolution of the
Massachusetts House, it may be urged, applies no less to the judgment of a court than to an act of the Congress.

Were it true, that the measures of government once passed into an act, the constitutionality of that act is stamped
with the seal of infallibility, and is no longer a subject for the deliberation or remonstrance of the citizen, to what
monstrous lengths might not an arbitrary and tyrannical administration carry its power. . . . Were such doctrine
sound, what species of oppression might not be inflicted on the prostrate liberties of our country? If such a
doctrine were true, our Constitution would be nothing but a name—nay, worse, a fatal instrument to sanctify
oppression, and legalize the tyranny which inflicts it.(33)

On February 15, 1809, both houses of the Massachusetts General Court concurred in a resolution declaring their
solemn conviction that the Embargo Acts are “in many particulars, unjust, oppressive, and unconstitutional.” To
be sure, mere expression of opinion could not in itself be “decisive of the question.” But through the
interposition of “peaceful and legal remedies,” Massachusetts proposed to protect her citizens against violations
of their rights. “While this State maintains its sovereignty and independence, all the citizens can find protection
against outrage and injustice in the strong arm of the State government.”(34)

Massachusetts then solemnly declared that in the view of its Legislature, the embargo was “not legally binding
on the citizens of this State.” (Emphasis supplied.) Yet until the embargo were repealed, it was urged not that the
law be obeyed, but only that “all parties aggrieved by the operation of this act . . . abstain from forcible
resistance.”

We may look also to Connecticut. Do her press, and her professors, and her legislators now frown upon the
South? This was what Connecticut said then:

The General Assembly are decided in the opinion, and do Resolve, that the acts aforesaid are . . . grievous to the
good people of this State, dangerous to their common liberties, incompatible with the Constitution of the United
States, and encroaching upon the immunities of this State.(35)

But Connecticut did not stop with mere expression of opinion. Her resolution directed all persons holding
executive office in the State not to afford “any official aid or co-operation in the execution of the act aforesaid.”
And more ominously still, Connecticut’s Legislature directed that the Governor be requested, “as commander in
chief of the military force of this State,” to cause the resolution to be published in general orders. Let us note
also this paragraph:

Resolved, that to preserve the Union, and support the Constitution of the United States, it becomes the duty of
the Legislatures of the States, in such a crisis of affairs, vigilantly to watch over, and vigorously to maintain, the
powers not delegated to the United States, but reserved to the States respectively, or to the people; and that a due

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regard to this duty, will not permit this Assembly to assist, or concur in giving effect to the aforesaid
unconstitutional act, passed, to enforce the embargo.(36)

(Are the legislatures of the Southern States, today, it may be asked, fairly to be condemned by their New
England brethren for viewing their responsibilities exactly as Connecticut and Massachusetts viewed their own
responsibilities a century and a half ago? Is it to be urged that both were wrong, Connecticut then, Virginia
now? Or is it not equally possible that New England legislatures were right then, in protecting the most intimate
concerns of their people, and Southern legislatures are equally right today?)

Finally, brief note may be made of a concluding resolution on the embargo, adopted by the General Assembly of
Rhode Island on March 4, 1809, the very day that the hated laws expired at the direction of Congress. The
embargo, said Rhode Island flatly, had been an “unconstitutional” proscription on the people. In resisting it, the
people of Rhode Island as one of the parties to the Federal compact, had a right to express their opposition; and
the General Assembly, for its part, had a duty as the organ of their sentiments and the depositary of their
authority,

to interpose for the purpose of protecting them from the ruinous inflictions of usurped and unconstitutional
power.(37)

The duty of the States to interpose, thus expressed by Rhode Island at the time of the Embargo Crisis, remains in
the view of this citizen of Virginia a high and undiminished duty of the States in our own generation.

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 4
Matters of the Militia
LET US remain in New England for a while. It is a strong land, strong peopled, strong principled; and for all the
blood they have shed against each other, the South and New England hold much in common. The row houses of
Beacon Street are brothers to those of King Street, and the many-steepled valleys of Vermont have their clean
and quiet counterparts in the Great Smokies and the Shenandoah Valley. The Southerner, traveling in New
England, often finds a spiritual kinship in the courtesy and reserve of the people he meets; and no less certainly
does the advocate of States’ rights, searching the history of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and
Vermont, find in their high-spirited past repeated expressions of New England’s devotion to the responsible role
assigned to the States.

The detested embargo was abandoned, we have noted, in March of 1809, only to give way to a non-intercourse
act almost equally resented. In April of 1810, John Randolph of Roanoke described this proscription in
characteristic language: “It has been reprobated and reviled by every man, of every political description, in this
House and out of it, from one end of the country to another.” Why, then was it kept on the books? “Is it a sort of
scarecrow, set up to frighten the great belligerents of Europe? Or is it a toy, a rattle, a bare plaything, to amuse
the great children of our political world?”(38)

Certainly New England was not amused. Her commerce still suffered, her ships still were idled. Worse yet,
blundering British diplomacy (by which Madison first was encouraged to believe that Britain would suspend her
restrictions on trade, only to be abruptly disabused of the thought) added to national feeling against the
government of George III. Bitterly, the Federalists saw Republicans make large gains in Congress and in State
legislatures; and to the insult of affairs abroad was added fresh injury at home, in the furious controversy of
1811 over the admission of Louisiana. To an angered New England, this was fresh evidence of the declining
influence of the East. Secession was talked openly on the village greens, and in Congress a melancholy Josiah
Quincy commented sadly that it soon would be the duty of some of the States “to prepare definitely for a
separation.”(39)

It was in this spirit of total discontent that the Federalists voted solidly against Madison’s request in June 1812
for a declaration of war against Great Britain. The resolution carried by the feeble vote of 19-13 in the Senate
and 79-49 in the House. To the Federalists, it was Madison’s war—and Clay’s and young Calhoun’s; it was “a
party and not a national war,” entered into by a “divided people.” In Massachusetts, the Legislature rebelliously
adopted resolutions urging her male citizens not to volunteer except for defense operations; the Governor
proclaimed a public fast to atone for the wickedness of the administration’s action.(40)

Nevertheless, as Southern States are so often reminded in another context these days, the declaration of war was
the supreme law of the land. There was no question of the constitutional power of Congress to declare war. But
we may well inquire: Where was the “spirit of willing compliance,” to which Southern States are abjured so
strenuously just now, in the New England of 1812?

War was declared on June 18. On the 22nd, General Dearborn, by authority of the President, called upon both
Massachusetts and Connecticut to supply detachments of their militia for coastal defense. Governor Caleb
Strong of Massachusetts flatly refused to comply. Under the Constitution, he said, Congress could provide for
calling forth the militia on three grounds only: To execute the laws of the Union, to suppress insurrection, or to
repel invasion. For his own part, he could not perceive that any of these exigencies was present. The Supreme
Judicial Court of Massachusetts agreed with him: Judges Parson, Sewall, and Parker, asked for an advisory
opinion, agreed that the right to decide when the militia would be ordered to duty was a right “not delegated to
the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States; it is reserved to the States respectively,

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and from the nature of the power, it must be exercised by those with whom the States have respectively
entrusted the chief command of the militia.”(41)

Governor Griswold of Connecticut took precisely the same view. On June 29, he convened his executive
council, which advised him to reject General Dearborn’s requisition. In August, the General Assembly of
Connecticut warmly concurred in the Governor’s course of resistance. If the State militia could be called out
upon the sole decision of Federal authority, said the Assembly’s resolution of August 25, it would have the
effect of converting the militia into standing troops of the United States. The Assembly was “not able to
discover that the Constitution of the United States justifies this claim.”

Let us note carefully what the Assembly next declared—this is Connecticut speaking:

The people of this State were among the first to adopt that Constitution. . . . They have a deep interest in its
preservation, and are still disposed to yield a willing and prompt obedience to all the legitimate requirements of
the Constitution of the United States.

But it must not be forgotten, that the State of Connecticut is a FREE SOVEREIGN and INDEPENDENT State;
that the United States are a confederacy of States; that we are a confederated and not a consolidated Republic.
The Governor of this State is under a high and solemn obligation, “to maintain the lawful rights and privileges
thereof, as a sovereign, free and independent State,” as he is “to support the Constitution of the United States,”
and the obligation to support the latter imposes an additional obligation to support the former. The building
cannot stand, if the pillars upon which it rests, are impaired or destroyed.(42) [Emphasis in the original.]

And because Connecticut, as a State, did not agree that Madison had authority to requisition her militia “to assist
in carrying on an offensive war,” Connecticut refused to participate until New England should in fact be
threatened “by an actual invasion of any portion of our territory.”

So, too, with Rhode Island. On October 6, Governor William Jones, on the advice of his Council and with the
approval of the General Assembly, advised Federal authorities that he alone, as Governor of the State, would
judge “whether those exigencies provided for by the Constitution exist or not.”

So, also, with Vermont. On October 23, 1813, Governor Chittenden declared in a message to the Assembly that
he always had regarded the militia as a force “peculiarly adapted and exclusively assigned for the service and
protection of the respective States.” It never could have been contemplated by the framers of the Constitution,
“who, it appears, in the most cautious manner guarded the sovereignty of the States, or by the States who
adopted it, that the whole body of the militia were, by any kind of magic, at once to be transformed into a
regular army for the purpose of foreign conquest.”

In the case of Vermont, there is a sequel to the story that may be briefly noted. By a proclamation of November
10, Governor Chittenden commanded the recall of a part of the Vermont militia that was then serving under
Federal command “for the defense of a neighboring State.” Vermont’s troops refused to obey this command and
arrested the Governor’s agent. A resolution then was offered in Congress instructing the prosecution of the
Governor for treason. A counter resolution was offered in Massachusetts, “pledging the support of the State to
the Governor and people of Vermont in their efforts to maintain their constitutional rights.”(43) Quite a rash of
other resolutions then broke out. New Jersey, in February of 1814, regarded “with contempt and abhorrence, the
ravings of an infuriated faction, either as issuing from a legislative body, a maniac Governor, or discontented
and ambitious demagogues.” In March, Pennsylvania also denounced Governor Chittenden, and viewed “with
utmost concern and disapprobation every attempt to screen from just punishment any individual or individuals,
however exalted by station, who may violate the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

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What may we learn from this today? This citizen of Virginia, taking note of these events, does not profess to say
who was right and who was wrong on the matter of the militia. Certainly it would appear that the question of
contested power, having been raised by responsible States in mid-summer of 1812, could have been settled
promptly had it been submitted to the arbitrament of all the States. The one point that may be emphasized, for
the purposes of this essay, is that for two solid years—from the summer of 1812 until New England actually was
invaded in the summer of 1814—Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont interposed their
sovereign powers against what they regarded as an encroachment by Federal authority upon their rights. They
stood granite-like upon what was to them a question of high constitutional principle.

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 5
Events of 1814
NEW ENGLAND'S contribution in this period to the story of State and Federal relations is by no means ended.
Even as the bitter controversy continued over the control of State militia, Congress in December, 1813, added a
fresh grievance to the Federalists’ overflowing cup: A new embargo law was adopted, more stringent than all
the embargoes of the preceding five years. Even shore fisheries and coastal trade were proscribed. In
Massachusetts, a flood of memorials and remonstrances poured in from town meetings. These petitions were
assembled and referred to a committee of the State Legislature headed by William Lloyd; and on February 18,
1814, the General Court of Massachusetts overwhelmingly approved what still is remembered as “Lloyd’s
Report.” It merits respectful attention.

The report first reviewed the protests of the town meetings against the December embargo:

This act is denounced by all the memorialists in the warmest and most energetic language as a gross and
palpable violation of the principles of the Constitution; and they express decidedly their opinion, that it cannot
be submitted to without a pusillanimous surrender of . . . rights and liberties. . . .

The Massachusetts legislators were wholly prepared to accept this view of the law, and to interpose their powers
against it. The people, they said, had given Congress no right to enact the law. And now let us read closely—this
is Massachusetts speaking:

A power to regulate commerce is abused, when employed to destroy it; and a manifest and voluntary abuse of
power sanctions the right of resistance, as much as a direct and palpable usurpation. The sovereignty reserved
to the States, was reserved to protect the citizens from acts of violence by the United States, as well as for
purposes of domestic regulation. We spurn the idea that the free, sovereign and independent State of
Massachusetts is reduced to a mere municipal corporation, without power to protect its people, and to defend
them from oppression, from whatever quarter it comes. Whenever the national compact is violated, and the
citizens of this State are oppressed by cruel and unauthorized laws, this Legislature is bound to interpose its
power, and wrest from the oppressor his victim. [Emphasis supplied.]

This is the spirit of our Union, and thus has it been explained by the very man [Madison], who now sets at
defiance all the principles of his early political life.(44)

What course could the Legislature pursue? Three avenues had been suggested. One was a memorial to Congress,
but that would be useless: “It has been again, and again resorted to, and with no other effect than to increase the
evils complained of.” Secondly, laws might be adopted to punish violations of the security of the people of
Massachusetts in their property; but sufficient State laws already existed: “No act of this Legislature can afford
any additional security.” Thirdly, following the proposal of Madison himself in the Virginia Resolution, a
convention of States could be urged, “for the purpose of devising proper measures to procure the united efforts
of the commercial States, to obtain such amendments or explanations of the Constitution, as will secure them
from future evils.”

It was this course that ultimately was to be sought, but Massachusetts, in February, thought the time not yet right
to take it. Some negotiations had begun toward ending the war, and if these were successful the burdens would
be removed. For a second reason, it was thought better to let the people themselves pass on the question of
summoning a convention among the offended States, by making it a campaign issue in the next election to the
General Court. Meanwhile, the people were urged patiently to wait “for the effectual interposition of the State
Government for their relief.” The embargo, in the State’s official view, was “unconstitutional and void.”

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It is difficult, considering the many forces and counter-forces leveled against each other in that tempestuous
year, to appraise the weight that should be accorded the resolute posture taken by the Massachusetts Legislature.
But the fact is that the embargo act of December, 1813, was not effectively enforced and soon was repealed,
largely because of the interposition of the New England States. The effect of their resistance was to nullify the
law.

Similarly, it is impossible to say whether, in the late fall of 1814, the oratory of Daniel Webster or the militant
opposition of Massachusetts and Connecticut was the more responsible for defeat of a conscription bill proposed
by Madison’s desperate administration. At its October session, the Connecticut Legislature condemned the
conscription plan as “not only intolerably burdensome and oppressive, but utterly subversive of the rights and
liberties of the people of this State.” Should the bill actually be passed, “it will become the imperious duty of the
Legislature of this State to exert themselves to ward off a blow so fatal to the liberties of a free people.” Hence
the Governor was instructed to summon an immediate session of the Assembly if the bill became law.

As events worked out, the conscription bill was defeated. Webster, tossing his massive head in a roaring
denunciation of the conduct of the war, condemned the bill as “this horrible lottery”—not only unconstitutional,
but worse than unconstitutional: “’tis murder.”(45) But Congress did pass, however, a “Bill in regard to the
Enlistment of Minors”; and Connecticut, in January, 1815, promptly undertook to nullify its provisions by
adopting her own “Act to Secure the Rights of Parents, Masters and Guardians.” The act required judges to
release on habeas corpus all minors enlisted without the consent of their parents or guardians, and provided for
fines and imprisonment against any person concerned in such enlistment who should remove any such minor out
of the State.(46) Massachusetts, the following month, enacted a similar law.

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 6
The Hartford Convention
WE MAY now profitably turn back to the strongly-worded resolution that Massachusetts had adopted in
February of 1814. Should all else fail, the Legislators had said, and negotiations with Britain prove fruitless, a
convention of the aggrieved New England States should be summoned.

All else did fail. The peace commission, in the spring, had nothing of a favorable nature to report. Meanwhile,
the British, who earlier had capitalized upon Federalist sentiment in New England by leaving her ports relatively
free of blockade, now began turning on pressure. During the summer, the blockade was extended, and coastal
raids became a matter of increasing concern. In August came the capture of Washington, and near collapse of
the national government. New England Federalists were not greatly concerned.(47) But when British troops
began to occupy parts of Maine and Massachusetts, New England States, which earlier had been so indifferent
to needs of the United States Army, now cried out for Federal forces. When these were not promptly provided,
the Legislatures turned to their own militia. Early in September, Governor Strong of Massachusetts called out
5,000 militiamen, and summoned a special session of the General Court for October 5. A committee of the
Legislature brought in a report accusing the national administration of deliberately neglecting the defense of
Massachusetts. The day of salvation had passed, said the committee, unless Massachusetts discarded an
administration “which made war for party purposes.”(48)

It was evident, said the committee, that the present Constitution did not give the Eastern States their proper
rights; the usual means of amending the Constitution were inadequate to the emergency. It was recommended,
therefore, that a convention be called to undertake the task.

The resolution thereupon adopted, in addition to providing for the raising of a State army of ten thousand men,
called for the appointment of twelve delegates to confer with delegates from other New England States. They
were to discuss measures of common defense, and also, “should they deem it expedient,” were “to lay the
foundation for a radical reform in the national compact, by inviting to a further convention, a deputation from all
the States in the Union.”

Rhode Island accepted warmly on November 5. “The Legislature and the whole people of this State already but
too well know how frequently and fruitlessly they have petitioned the Federal government for some portion of
those means of defense for which we have paid so dearly, and to which, by the Constitution, we are so fully
entitled.” But these petitions had gone unheeded, or been answered only by “unmeaning professions and
promises never performed, but generally by telling us to protect ourselves.” Rhode Island and her sister States
were not compelled to continue to accept such mistreatment “by a government we have ourselves created.”

Connecticut also accepted the invitation of Massachusetts, and though neither Vermont nor New Hampshire
officially accepted, both were represented when the convention began at Hartford on December 15.

Now, the Hartford Convention of 1814 has often been ridiculed. It has been described as a “purely party
assemblage, lacking the united support of New England.”(49) Its proposals for constitutional amendment later
were to be “unqualifiedly rejected” by New Jersey, denounced severely by New York, condemned in a long
report from Pennsylvania, and rejected without comment by Vermont, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio,
Tennessee, and Louisiana.

Yet this assemblage ought not to be so cavalierly disdained. The twenty-six delegates who met in the counsel
chamber of the State House at Hartford included some outstanding men—the Chief Justice and an associate
justice of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, the Chief Justice of Rhode Island, former United States Senator

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George Cabot of Massachusetts, and Harrison Grey Otis, an outstanding Federalist who had represented
Massachusetts in Congress. Among others present were Nathan Dane, author of the Ordinance of 1798; Stephen
Longfellow, father of the poet; Timothy Bigelow, Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives;
Chauncey Goodrich, Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut; Senator James Hillhouse of New Haven, Treasurer of
Yale College, and several leading members of the State legislatures.

The convention met in closed session from December 15 until January 4, when its report was formally adopted.
It is true, as William Edward Buckley said of it, that much of the report “took the tone of a party platform.”(50)
It opened with an account of the virtues of Federalist administrations and the general incompetence and
corruption of the Republican administrations. Among the amendments proposed to the Constitution was a
patently political proposal, aimed at ending the Virginia dynasty, by which no President could be eligible for
reelection, nor could Presidents be elected from the same State for successive terms. Another proposed
amendment, recalling Jefferson’s Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, would have barred naturalized
citizens from serving in Congress or holding any civil office under the national government. Other proposed
changes in the Constitution would have based representation in Congress (and votes in the electoral college)
solely upon the number of free inhabitants of the States; required a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress
to admit new States or to declare war; limited any embargoes laid by Congress to sixty days; and required that
any act shutting off commercial relations with a foreign nation must pass Congress by a two-thirds vote. The last
group of proposals, it will be seen, were concerned not with partisan politics as such, but with the concerns that
had dominated New England since the first embargo six years earlier.

These resolutions became public on January 6. But unknown to the delegates at Hartford, while they met, a
peace treaty ending the war had been signed at Ghent on December 24; even then the treaty was on its way to
Washington for ratification. Then, on January 8, Jackson defeated the British at New Orleans. As soon as these
events became known, the whole purpose of the Hartford Convention vanished, and jubilant Republicans leaped
upon the resolutions with vengeful cries of “treason!” and “disunion!” and “folly!”

But was the Hartford Convention so futile? Was it, in retrospect, as great a blunder as some historians have
termed it?

There is some reason to believe that this drastic interposition by the New England States achieved at least some
of the objects which were sought, and that the convention itself was not nearly so repudiated by the people at the
time as it has been denounced by historians of a much later era.

Harrison Gray Otis, who was to spend much of the remainder of his life defending the Hartford Convention,(51)
made some of these points in A Short Account of the Hartford Convention, which he published at Boston in
1823. Here he notes, for example, that the Massachusetts House of Representatives, which had approved the call
of the convention in October of 1814 by a vote of 260 to 90, the following year adopted a new report, defending
and approving the Hartford resolutions, by an equally impressive vote of 159 to 48. Also, the year after the
“blundering” Hartford Convention, Massachusetts voters returned Caleb Strong to the Governorship by the same
“relative majority as he had received the year before.” Evidently the delegates were not repudiated by their own
people.

More important, however, is this: The Hartford Report concluded with a resolution urging adoption of a law by
which State troops would be used in State defense. This was exactly the substance of a law, Otis notes,
“incredible and unlooked for as it certainly was, which was enacted by the national government on the 27th day
of January, 1815.” The law authorized and required the President to receive into the service of the United States
any troops which might have been raised and organized under the authority of a State, whose term of service
was not less than twelve months, subject to the rules and articles of war, with the provision that such troops
could be employed “in the State raising the same, or in an adjoining State, and not elsewhere, except with the
assent of the Executive of the State so raising the same.”

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“Now, we declare,” said Otis, “and we appeal most solemnly to every honest man who lived in those disastrous
days, if the whole bone and muscle, and marrow of the controversy was not touching the exact and precise point
which this law absolutely and entirely settled.”

Another major grievance of the New England States, repeatedly emphasized by their members in Congress, was
the refusal of the United States to pay members of the State militia who had served in defending any part of the
United States. The Hartford Convention also had asked for redress on this score, and a bill carrying out the
proposal had passed the United States Senate and was on its way to the House when news of peace arrived.
“What is this,” asked Otis, “but acknowledging in plain and direct terms the justice and propriety of all the
proceedings of New England during the war?” Up until the very moment that news of the peace arrived, he
insists, “the government was not only disposed but prepared to comply with every proposition contained in the
commission.”(52)

It is not the purpose of the author of these notes either to applaud or to condemn the conduct of the New
England States in this period of 1808-15; the purpose is simply to recount what happened. The States interposed,
and to a very large extent, they succeeded in obtaining the ends which they, as States, deemed so vitally
important to their own interests: They undertook to nullify the whole series of acts relating to non-intercourse,
non-importation, and embargo. Taking a strict construction of the constitutional provision relating to calling
forth the militia, they succeeded in challenging national authority throughout the whole of the war. Their
interposition was influential in defeating a conscription bill they regarded as unconstitutional; and when a
corollary bill actually was approved, relating to the enlistment of minors, they effectively nullified it with State
laws of their own. Until the day that news was received in Washington of Jackson’s victory and the Treaty of
Ghent, they were well on their way to achieving two of the most important objects sought by the Hartford
Convention. Throughout this period, the interposing States repeatedly asserted, in the strongest and most
unequivocal terms, their view of the Union as a confederacy in which the sovereignty and the broad reserved
rights of the States must be respected. They did not hesitate to term actions of the Federal government
“unconstitutional and void,” and they laid down, as a deliberate, and considered public policy, a program of
steadfast resistance to what they deemed encroachments upon their powers.

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 7
The Bank of the United States
SOME of the greatest embarrassments of the Madison administration during the War of 1812 stemmed from the
inability of the government efficiently to finance its operations. The charter of the first Bank of the United States
expired in 1811, and a hostile Congress, divided by factionalism and genuinely concerned at the constitutional
issues of a national bank, stubbornly refused to renew it. By 1813, the Treasury was desperate. Efforts to float
war loans met with the resentful disdain of State banks. Legitimate revenues of the government could not be
transferred for lack of a national common medium of exchange. By 1814, the Treasury itself could no longer
pay interest on the national debt. In Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, the Federal government found itself
unable to redeem treasury notes. The War Department could not pay a bill for $3,500. The State Department
could not even pay for its stationery.(53)

In this chaotic state of affairs, many Republicans deserted their principles of strict construction: Even Calhoun
came to support the second Bank of the United States, and took a decisive part in the leadership that led finally
to the act of April 10, 1816, recreating the bank under a twenty-year charter.

Scarcely had the bank been revived, however, before it ran into grave difficulties through mismanagement,
speculation, and fraud.(54) Stock-jobbers and gamblers manipulated its securities shamefully. In Baltimore,
some especially fraudulent transactions ironically centered around Cashier James W. McCulloch, whose name
soon was to be identified with the bank’s preservation.(55)

In a desperate effort to retrieve itself from difficulties, the Bank of the United States began calling upon State
banks for repayment of loans. But the State banks themselves were far overextended, and often unable to pay. In
the resulting constriction of credit, hundreds of merchants, farmers, and storekeepers found themselves in
bondage to “the monster.” At one point, the bank owned “a large part of Cincinnati” through such
foreclosures,(56) but communities in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Indiana were scarcely less afflicted. As
trade began to dry up and merchants dunned their impoverished creditors, a wave of hostility toward the Bank of
the United States swept the country.

The animosity of the people was soon reflected in acts of their State governments. Indiana in 1816 and Illinois in
1818 inserted provisions in their Constitutions prohibiting the Bank of the United States from establishing
branches within their jurisdictions. North Carolina imposed a tax of $5,000 on the Fayetteville branch. Georgia
ordered a tax of 31¼¢ on every $100 of the bank’s stock. Maryland in 1817 undertook to impose a tax of
$15,000 a year on the bank’s Baltimore branch. Tennessee levied a tax of $50,000 per year, and Kentucky
exceeded this with a tax of $60,000 per year.(57)

Believing that these State taxes would bring destruction of the bank, Federal authorities hastily drummed up a
contest in Maryland, in the certain conviction that John Marshall would bring home a decision in their favor. He
did not disappoint them. In February of 1819, Marshall handed down one of his half-dozen most important
decisions, in the renowned case of McCulloch vs. Maryland.(58) This decision is so well known, and so widely
quoted, that no good purpose would be served by reviewing it at any length. Here Marshall gave the broadest
possible construction to that clause of the Constitution which authorizes the Congress to pass whatever laws
may be “necessary or proper” to carry out functions of the Federal government. On this point, Marshall held that
“necessary” should be understood to mean no more than “convenient,” or “useful,” or “conducive to.” “Let the
end be legitimate,” he said, “let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means, which are appropriate,
which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the
Constitution, are constitutional.”(59)

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On the second point, he explored at great length Maryland’s contention—an entirely sound and proper
contention, in the view of the author of these notes—that the Constitution did not emanate from the broad mass
of the people, but “as the act of sovereign and independent States.” But Marshall, of course, found it “difficult to
sustain” this self-evident proposition that the powers of the General government had been delegated by the
States. It was true, he had to admit, that the Constitution had been ratified by the people in their respective
States, but what of this? “Where else should they have assembled?” No political dreamer was ever wild enough,
Marshall asserted, “to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the
American people into one common mass. Of consequence, when they act, they act as States.” But Marshall,
dogmatically refusing to distinguish between a “State” and a “State government,” thoroughly confused the
essential point here at issue. He threw a sop in the direction of strict construction: “The principle that [the
Federal government] can exercise only the powers granted to it, would seem too apparent to have required to be
enforced by all those arguments which its enlightened friends . . . found it necessary to urge.” But prophetically,
he remarked that “the question respecting the extent of the powers actually granted, is perpetually, arising, and
will probably continue to arise, as long as our system shall exist.” Then, agreeing that the States have an
undoubted power to tax within their jurisdictions, he denied that the bank was within their reach; it was a
creature of the Federal government, of all the people, beyond the power of any State or group of States. “That
the power to tax involves the power to destroy,” he observed, in the most famous line from this decision, is a
proposition not to be denied.

“The court has bestowed on this subject its most deliberate consideration,” said Marshall, “The result is a
conviction that the States have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner
control, the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress to carry into execution the powers vested
in the general government. This is, we think, the unavoidable consequence of that supremacy which the
Constitution had declared.”

And who would declare and define that supremacy of the Federal government? Why, John Marshall, to be sure,
Chief Justice of the Federal government’s Supreme Court. The States that had created the Constitution, and
bound themselves by their mutual compact, were to have no effective voice in saying what the compact meant.
Presumably all the people, through the Congress, had approved the bank; therefore none of the people, through
their States, could disapprove it. When the people acted nationally, as Marshall thought, to aggrandize the
powers of the Federal government, the people were right; when the identical people acted as States, to restrict
the Federal agency, they were wrong.

His opinion, to be sure, did not go unchallenged. One of the most lucid, and indeed overwhelming criticisms of
Marshall’s doctrines, came in Virginia from Spencer Roane, chief judge of the State’s Supreme Court. It was an
accident of fortune, and a most unlucky one, that saw Roane writing letters to the Richmond Enquirer while
Marshall wrote law on the Court. Their positions could easily have been reversed. Historians are agreed that had
Ellsworth not retired from the Court in time for Adams to name Marshall Chief Justice, the incoming Jefferson
would have appointed Roane to the place Marshall was to occupy.(60) In that event, we might have enjoyed a
government as our government constitutionally was intended to be, by a federation of sovereign States jointly
controlling their mutual agent, the Federal government. Roane ranks among the greatest “might have beens” of
our history. He was a man of towering integrity, great eloquence, and profound convictions on the nature of the
Union. He was a States’ Righter in a way that his high-tempered father-in-law, Patrick Henry, could never have
been, for Roane’s views were grounded in a depth of penetrating thought that the more colorful Henry rarely
brought to his public statements.

The Supreme Court’s decision in the McCulloch case, Roane was to write, served to expunge the words
“necessary and proper” from the Constitution. And “great as is the confidence of the nation in all its tribunals,
they are not at liberty to change the meaning of our language” or effectively “to change the Constitution.”(61)
More than this, in Roane’s view, the court “had no power to adjudicate away the reserved rights of a sovereign
member of the confederacy, and vest them in the general government.”

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With great insight, Roane observed that it is ever the tendency of man to submit, little by little, to infractions of
the fundamental law; the American people had not rebelled against George III until a general declaration had
come along, asserting for the British Parliament a right to legislate for the American colonies “in all cases
whatsoever.” In the McCulloch case, Roane perceived the same sort of general declaration: “If the limits
imposed on the general government, by the Constitution, are stricken off, they have literally, the power to
legislate for us ‘in all cases whatsoever’: and then we may bid a last adieu to the State governments.”

Roane went on to examine, with great care, the basic nature of the Union. The Federal government, it was
intended, should have no powers beyond those specifically delegated by the States; all other powers were
reserved then, in 1788, and must always remain reserved to the States or to the people, until delegated by
Constitutional amendment. Was it not apparent, he asked, that Congress was to have, under the Constitution,
only the powers “herein granted”? And was it not a reasonable construction, that the power of Congress to adopt
laws “necessary and proper” for carrying out its enumerated powers, related only to those laws fairly incident to
such powers? The phrase, said Roane, “created no extension of the powers previously granted.” Neither could
the Supreme Court, by fiat, extend or stretch the language; if Federal powers were to be extended, or State
powers further limited, let it be done “by amendment to the Constitution.” Let it be an “act of the people, and
not that of subordinate agents.”

By its opinion in the McCulloch case, said Roane, the Court had laid down principles that “tend directly to
consolidation of the States, and to strip them of some of the most important attributes of their sovereignty.” Yet
the truth was, that the respective States never had consented to a consolidated government. As sovereign States,
true, they jointly had delegated some of their powers, but they did not become less sovereign thereafter. They
remained separate, respective States. He asked incredulously how Marshall could hold otherwise: “The States . .
. gave birth to the Constitution; they support its existence, and they alone are capable of reforming or changing
its form and substance, and yet we are informed by a solemn adjudication that its powers are not derived from
that source, and consequently, that they are not parties to it!”

To be sure, Roane conceded, Marshall’s nationalist doctrine was not new. It had been advanced by Chase and
Washington and Paterson, among others, at the time of the Alien and Sedition Acts. But the doctrine had then
been “exposed and refuted, and I did not expect that it would be brought forward at this day under the proposed
sanction of the highest judicial authority.”

One more paragraph from Roane’s exposition, and reluctantly this citizen of Virginia will resume his own
narrative notes. But let this be attended carefully:

The doctrine [which denies that the States are parties to the Federal compact], if admitted to be true, would be of
fatal consequence to the rights and freedom of the people of the States. If the States are not parties to the
compact, the legislatures of the several States, who annually bring together the feelings, the wishes, and the
opinions of the people within their respective limits, would not have a right to canvass the public measures of
the Congress, or of the President, nor to remonstrate against the encroachments of power, nor to resist the
advances of usurpation, tyranny and oppression. They would no longer be hailed as the sentinels of the public
liberty, nor as the protectors of their own rights. Every government, which has ever yet been established, feels a
disposition to increase its own powers. Without the restraints which are imposed by an enlightened public
opinion, this tendency will inevitably conduct the freest government to the exercise of tyrannized power. If the
right of resistance be denied, or taken away, despotism inevitably follows.

It has, however, been supposed by some that the Constitution has provided a remedy for every evil: That the
right of the State governments to protest against, or to resist encroachments on their authority is taken away, and
transferred to the Federal judiciary, whose power extends to all cases arising under the Constitution; that the
Supreme Court is the umpire to decide between the States on the one side, and the United States on the other, in
all questions touching the constitutionality of laws, or acts of the Executive. There are many cases which can

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never be brought before that tribunal, and I do humbly conceive that the States never could have committed an
act of such egregious folly as to agree that their umpire should be altogether appointed and paid by the other
party. The Supreme Court may be a perfectly impartial tribunal to decide between two States, but cannot be
considered in that point of view when the contest lies between the United States and one of its members.(62)
[Emphasis supplied.]

Thus, in Roane’s view, the States not only had a right to tax the Bank of the United States; they also had a right
to resist the Supreme Court’s pronouncement until the States themselves had settled the question of contested
power by their own arbitrament. It is evident that his views were widely shared. Despite the McCulloch opinion,
many of the States continued to resist the bank. Georgia in 1819, and again in 1821, adopted particularly
harassing enactments, designed to bar the bank from suing in Federal Courts.(63)

It was in Ohio, however, that events came to a climax. No State had suffered more grievously than Ohio from
the disastrous inflation brought about by the bank’s first years of blundering mismanagement.(64) This hatred of
the bank was manifested by an act of the Ohio Legislature in 1819—enacted in the teeth of the McCulloch
decision—levying a tax of $50,000 per year on each of the bank’s two branches in the State. This tax was to
become due on September 15, 1820, but the bank, having protested vainly against the levy, refused to pay and
instead obtained an injunction from a Federal judge against its collection.

Before the injunction could be served, however, State Auditor Osborn ordered one of his deputies, John L.
Harper, to collect the tax by persuasion if he could, but by violence if he must. Entering the bank’s branch office
at Chillicothe, on the morning of September 17, Harper made one last request for voluntary payment. When this
was denied, he leaped over the counter, strode into the bank vaults, and helped himself to $100,000 in paper and
specie.(65) He then turned this over to a deputy, one H. M. Currie; and Mr. Currie, stuffing this considerable
hoard into a small trunk, with which the party thoughtfully had come equipped, loaded the trunk into his wagon
and set off down the road to Columbus.

The bank furiously brought suit against Osborn and Harper for recovery of the money, relying, of course, upon
Marshall’s opinion in the McCulloch case. But Ohio was in no mood to regard the Supreme Court’s
pronouncements as the supreme law of the land. In December of 1820, Ohio’s House of Representatives brought
in a blistering report, substantially concurred in by the Senate on January 3, 1821, condemning the bank’s suit as
a suit against the State itself. “To acquiesce in such an encroachment upon the privileges and authority of the
States, without an effort to defend them, would be an act of treachery to the State itself, and to all the States that
compose the American Union.”

Particular attention may be directed to the statement that next follows. Gentlemen, this is Ohio speaking:

The committee are aware of the doctrine, that the Federal courts are exclusively vested with jurisdiction to
declare, in the last resort, the true interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. To this doctrine, in the
latitude contended for, they never can give their assent.(66)

An express provision of the Constitution, said Ohio, places the States, in suits brought against them by
individuals, beyond the jurisdiction of the Federal courts. Citing the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, and
quoting at length from Madison’s Report of 1799, the Ohio Legislature declared that the elections of 1800— the
“Jefferson Revolution”—gave the sanction of the people themselves to the view that even the Supreme Court
must bow to the supreme people of the States.

Thus has the question, whether the Federal Courts are the sole expositors of the Constitution of the United Slates
in the last resort, or whether the States, “as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common
judge,” have an equal right to interpret that Constitution for themselves, where their sovereign rights are

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involved, been decided against the pretension of the Federal judges by the people themselves, the true source of
all legitimate powers.

John Marshall’s Court was wrong, said Ohio bluntly, in the McCulloch case; and because the Court’s opinion
had encroached so unwarrantably upon the reserved powers of the States, there was no obligation upon Ohio to
acquiesce therein. After all, the resolution continued, it was one thing for the Court to define a right, and another
for the right to be exercised. Had not William Marbury, the appointee of Adams, been told that he had a right to
his commission as justice of the peace? Yet was it not true that Marbury had never received it? Similarly, the
Court had ruled that purchasers of the Yazoo lands were entitled to their property. “But the decision availed
them nothing, unless as a make-weight in effecting compromise.”

These two cases are evidence that in great questions of political rights and political powers, a decision of the
Supreme Court of the United States is not conclusive of the rights decided by it. . . . Surely the State of Ohio
ought not to be condemned because she did not abandon her solemn legislative acts as a dead letter upon the
promulgation of an opinion of that tribunal.

If the Bank of the United States would agree to get out of Ohio, close its branches, and settle its business, Ohio
proposed in its resolution to return the tax money. But whether or not such a compromise should be effected,

It behooves the General Assembly . . . to take measures for vindicating the character of the State, and also for
awakening the attention of the separate States to the consequences that may result from the doctrines of the
Federal courts upon the questions that have arisen. And besides, as it is possible that the proposition of
compromise may not be accepted, it is the duty of the General Assembly to take ulterior measures for asserting
and maintaining the rights of the State by all constitutional means within their power.

And what were some of these “ulterior measures” by which Ohio would interpose her sovereign powers against
the Supreme Court’s decree?

For this purpose the committee recommend that provisions be made by law, forbidding the keepers of our jails
from receiving into their custody any person committed at the suit of the Bank of the United States, or for any
injury done to them; prohibiting our judicial officers from taking acknowledgments of conveyance where the
Bank is a party, or when made for their use, and our recorders from receiving or recording such conveyances;
forbidding our courts, justices of the peace, judges and grand juries from taking any cognizance of any wrong
alleged to have been committed upon any species of property owned by the Bank, or upon any of its corporate
rights or privileges, and prohibiting our notaries public from protesting any notes or bills held by the Bank or
their agents or made payable to them.

Ohio concluded her resolution by expressly approving the “Doctrine of ’98” (by a vote of 59-7), denouncing the
Federal courts for violation of the Constitution, pledging her best efforts to maintain “by all legal and
constitutional means” the right to tax the bank, and resolving—by a vote of 64-1:

That this General Assembly do protest against the doctrine that the political rights of the separate States that
compose the American Union, and their powers as sovereign States, may be settled and determined in the
Supreme Court of the United States, so as to conclude and bind them, in cases contrived between individuals,
and where they are no one of them parties direct.

The Ohio Assembly went on to carry out many of these legislative recommendations, beginning with an act in
January, 1821, withdrawing from the Bank of the United States “the protection and aid of the laws of the State
in certain cases.” Meanwhile, the bank continued to prosecute its suit against the State auditor and State
treasurer, and in September of 1821 obtained a decree in the Circuit Court ordering the State officials to restore
the money. The State treasurer, one Sullivan, refused to obey this command. An attachment for contempt was

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issued against him, and he was thrown into prison. The bank then obtained the appointment of commissioners
who went into Sullivan’s cell, forcibly took from him the key to the State vaults, and thereupon helped
themselves to the original $98,000—evidently still in the same trunk where Currie had placed it the year
before.(67)

This action on the bank’s part served only to fan the public’s indignation, with the result that for three more
years Ohio continued to harass the bank’s operations in every way that could be devised. The State officials took
a further appeal to the Supreme Court, and in February, 1824, John Marshall wrote an end to the stormy
litigation in an opinion reviewing and confirming the court’s position in the McCulloch case, and declaring
Ohio’s tax law unconstitutional.

The opinion is an interesting exposition of Marshall’s strongly nationalist views, and is the more interesting for
the evidence it offers of the Chief Justice’s progressively stronger attitude in this regard. Fifteen years earlier, in
another case that curiously paralleled the Osborn case, officials of Georgia had forcibly entered the Savannah
branch of the first Bank of the United States and seized $2,000 in payment of a State tax; but when the bank
appealed, Marshall cautiously held that the bank had no power to sue in the Federal courts. Though it would
appear that the first Bank of the United States was equally an instrument of national policy with the Second
Bank of the United States, in 1809 Marshall took a narrower view. Or perhaps he felt that his opinion against
Pennsylvania in the case of Judge Peters, announced at the same term, would be about all the resentful States
would stand; in any event, he ducked the bank case in Georgia in 1809, but he managed it with characteristically
Marshallian aplomb: The Supreme Court has an equal duty, he said piously, “to exercise jurisdiction where it is
conferred, and not to usurp it where it is not conferred.”(68)

But in 1824, Marshall did not hesitate to declare that Federal courts had jurisdiction over the Bank of the United
States’ various proceedings against State officers or State banks. If he were thus reversing the Georgia case of
1809, as Justice Johnson, dissenting, believed, Marshall was not concerned. Whether the decision of 1809 “be
right or wrong,” he said briskly, a new case entirely was presented from Ohio. He brushed aside the State’s
defense that the bank’s suit was in essence a suit against the State of Ohio itself: The State was not a party on
the record. Further, if the agents of a State government were permitted to arrest the execution of Federal laws, or
to prevent Federal instrumentalities from carrying on their functions, then each member of the Union would be
capable, at its will,

of attacking the nation, of arresting its progress at every step, of acting vigorously and effectually in the
execution of its designs; while the nation stands naked, stripped of its defensive armor, and incapable of
shielding its agent or executing its laws. . . .(69)

Yet it may be asked, in reviewing these olympian pronouncements of Marshall’s Court, is not precisely the same
objection valid as to Federal assaults upon State prerogatives? When Federal judges are free to attack the
States, arrest the progress of their institutions, strip them naked of their reserved powers—what, then, are the
States to do to shield their agents or execute their laws? Marshall’s response, presumably, to judge from his
comments in the McCulloch case, would have been that the Federal government “is supreme within its sphere of
action,” and a branch of the Federal government, the Supreme Court, will determine the boundaries of that
sphere, blowing it up like a balloon as the Court pleases.

To be sure, no such authority to umpire State and Federal disputes ever had been given to the Supreme Court.
As Calhoun and John Taylor of Caroline often noted, the power had indeed been expressly denied to the Court
by the Convention of 1787, and for the obvious reason that Roane (and Madison, and Jefferson) so frequently
laid down: “The Supreme Court is but a department of the general government. A department is not competent
to do that to which the whole government is inadequate. . . . They cannot do it unless we tread underfoot the
principle which forbids a party to decide his own cause.”(70)

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But Marshall, having decided the Federal government’s own cause in 1819 and again in 1824, in the end could
not prevail. The constitutional issues raised so vigorously by Ohio continued to hold widespread support.
Resistance by the States to the bank was never abandoned.

In Kentucky in 1825, Governor Desha warmly adopted Ohio’s position: “When the general government
encroaches upon the rights of the State,” he asked, “is it a safe principle to admit that a portion of the
encroaching power shall have the right to determine finally whether an encroachment has been made or not? In
fact, most of the encroachments made by the general government flow through the Supreme Court itself, the
very tribunal which claims to be the final arbiter of all such disputes. What chance for justice have the States
when the usurpers of their rights are made their judges? Just as much as individuals when judged by their
oppressors. It is therefore believed to be the right, as it may hereafter become the duty of the State governments,
to protect themselves from encroachments, and their citizens from oppression, by refusing obedience to the
unconstitutional mandates of the Federal judges.”(71)

Nor was Kentucky alone. Despite the Court’s opinion in the McCulloch and Osborn cases, Tennessee did not
repeal her tax law until 1827, and then by the narrowest of margins. Connecticut in 1829 devised a new scheme
to harass the bank, and South Carolina in 1830 imposed a tax upon the dividends of stockholders resident in that
State. With the election of Jackson, who hated all banks, this hostility on the part of the States gained new
strength. New York and New Hampshire adopted strong resolutions urging that the bank not be rechartered, and
Jackson’s veto of a premature recharter bill (July 10, 1832) won wide approval.

In the face of this unrelenting warfare, the bank could not survive. Withdrawal of the public deposits began in
August of 1833, under Jackson’s order; and when Pennsylvania’s Governor Wolf, who had been one of the
bank’s staunchest supporters, denounced the institution in his message to the Legislature in March of 1834,
public opinion was fatally influenced against the bank.(72) The Pennsylvania Senate adopted fresh resolutions
urging that the bank ought not to be rechartered. The following month, the United States House of
Representatives adopted the same view, and the bank’s days came to an end.

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 8
Internal Improvements
IT HAS been suggested earlier in these notes that interposition by the States against Federal encroachments may
take a wide variety of forms, ranging from the mildest remonstrance at one extreme to resolute nullification at
the other. In the militant postures taken by Pennsylvania in the Olmstead case, by New England during the War
of 1812, and by Ohio in its resistance to the Bank of the United States, one may find examples of relatively
strong efforts by the States to invoke their sovereign powers against what they regarded as unwarranted and
unconstitutional actions of Federal authority.

Yet these notes would be less complete than they are if reference were not made to some of the more modest
protests offered from time to time by the States. Among these, the objections voiced in the 1820’s against the
growth of “internal improvements” offer a fair example.

Let Governor Wilson of South Carolina be recognized. He is speaking to the General Assembly in December,
1824:

There is one subject of deep and vital importance to the stability of general and State governments, to which I
beg leave to invite your attention. Every friend of our present Constitution, in its original purity, cannot but have
witnessed the alarming extent to which the Federal judiciary and Congress have gone toward establishing a great
and consolidated government, subversive of the rights of the States and contravening the letter and spirit of the
Constitution of the Union.

The act of the last session of Congress appropriating money to make surveys [act of April 30, 1824] is but an
entering wedge which will be followed, no doubt, by the expenditure of millions.

Unless the people apply the proper corrective, the day, I fear, is not far distant when South Carolina shall be
grievously assessed to pay for the cutting of a canal across Cape Cod. . . .(73)

What Governor Wilson might have said of a Central Arizona Project or an Upper Colorado Project can be
imagined. His point, and assuredly it remains a valid point to this day, is that the Constitution at no point
directly sanctions the vast “internal improvements” made under congressional authority. The power is at best an
implied power, said to be necessary and proper to national defense, or to the establishment of post roads, or to
the regulation of commerce among the States. So loose a construction, in Wilson’s view, was “an open violation
of that which has heretofore universally been admitted the true rule for expounding all grants.”

The Senate of South Carolina agreed with Governor Wilson’s view of the internal improvements program, but
the House of Representatives did not. Indeed, the South Carolina House adopted a resolution reciting stiffly that
“the people have conferred no power upon their State Legislature to impugn the acts of the Federal government
or the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States.” By the following year, however, this view had
changed: Both houses of the South Carolina Assembly agreed that “among those rights retained in this [Federal]
Constitution to the people, is, the unalienable right of remonstrating against any encroachments upon that
Constitution by the Congress of the United States, or any other officer belonging or acting under the general
government.”(74) To restrain this birthright of protest “would be to establish that odious doctrine of non-
resistance and perfect obedience.” In South Carolina’s view, “Congress does not possess the power, under the
Constitution, to adopt a general system of internal improvements as a national measure.”

Just a week after South Carolina adopted this resolution, it is interesting to note, Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to
Madison, suggested the desirability of Virginia’s passing new resolutions, in the spirit of 1798, denouncing the

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internal improvement laws as not warranted by the Constitution.(75) He enclosed with this letter a draft of a
proposed “Virginia Protest,” to which every friend of States’ rights profitably may repair. Here Jefferson set
forth in the clearest and most explicit language that “the right to construct roads, open canals, and effect other
internal improvements within the territories and jurisdictions exclusively belonging to the several States” had
never been delegated to the Congress, “but remains to each State among its domestic and unalienated powers,
exercisable within itself and by its domestic authorities alone.”(76) But Jefferson was entirely agreeable to
seeing this power specifically vested in the Federal government by appropriate constitutional amendment. He
had commented in a letter to Edward Livingston the year before that he felt “there is not a State in the Union
which would not give the power willingly.”(77) Surely, he felt, that would be better than to witness the
continued distortion of the Constitution by the doctrine of “implied powers,” and the continued practice among
Congressmen of the custom “which, with us, is called logging,’ the term of the farmers for their exchanges of
aid in rolling together the logs of their newly-cleared grounds.”(78)

Madison, however, advised against Virginia’s adoption of the protest drafted by Jefferson,(79) and Jefferson
dropped the idea. But on January 14, Maryland’s General Assembly adopted a resolution, replying to South
Carolina’s action of the preceding month, in which Maryland asserted that Congress did indeed “possess the
power . . . to adopt a general system of internal improvement.”(80) Virginia’s General Assembly then went
ahead, in March, with a resolution very much along the lines Jefferson had suggested. Here Virginia specifically
revived and confirmed her Resolution of 1798, and held that the right of the States to interpose, then asserted,
applies “with full force” against the act directing a survey of routes for roads and canals. By an overwhelming
vote (127-26 in the House, 12-8 in the Senate), Virginia declared that the appropriation of money for such
purposes would be “a violation of the Constitution.” This “most solemn protest” was renewed in March of 1827
in further resolutions, temperately phrased, against Federal efforts to make internal improvements within the
State.

Manifestly, nothing came of this interposition by South Carolina and Virginia. The issue of internal
improvements, in their view, was not of sufficient magnitude to warrant further, more drastic action. Besides, a
far more significant problem, still no bigger than a man’s hand, could be seen in the distance: The same
resolutions that protested the policy of internal improvements also protested the tariff act of 1824.

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 9
Kentucky vs. the Court
BEFORE a review is attempted, however, of the dramatic events that stemmed from the tariff laws of this
period, attention may be usefully directed to the determined, violent—and largely successful—interposition of
Kentucky and Georgia against Federal decrees that seemed to them gross encroachments upon their reserved
powers. Let us consider the case of Kentucky first.

In the period immediately following the Revolutionary War, Virginia, in common with other States, made
widespread grants of land to the soldiers, officers, sailors, and marines who had fought in the war. In other
cases, speculators and land companies acquired enormous tracts of property, parts of which they then sold or
leased—or abandoned. Many of these grants conveyed land by exceedingly vague metes and bounds; conflicts
of title were the rule, not the exception.

Thus, when the time came in 1789 for Kentucky to be split off from Virginia, some provision necessarily had to
be made covering the rights and interests of persons who held land in the Kentucky territory under grant from
Virginia. By an act of the Virginia General Assembly on December 18, 1789, it was provided that as a condition
of Kentucky’s formation, all such interests must remain as valid in the new State of Kentucky as they were in
the parent State of Virginia. Kentucky accepted this condition and embodied the provision in her Constitution.
In June, 1792, Kentucky entered the Union.

Immediately, Kentucky authorities encountered what Justice Johnson later was to describe as “the very peculiar
nature of the land titles created by Virginia, and then floating over the State of Kentucky.”(81) Virginia had left
matters “in a state of confusion [which] rendered it impossible for Kentucky to guaranty any specific tract to an
individual.”(82) In an effort to achieve some stability, Kentucky in February, 1797, adopted an act concerning
occupying claimants of land, and followed this with a supplementary act in January, 1812. Briefly, both acts
provided that when any claimant to land, occupying property under a title he had some reason to regard as valid,
should be ousted by a new claimant having a better title, the incoming owner should reimburse the former
occupant for improvements made upon the land; further, the original occupant was to be excused from payment
of rents to the owner who displaced him.

Obviously, these acts of 1797 and 1812, while they achieved some stability, achieved it largely in favor of
Kentucky’s local interests and adversely to the interests of Virginia claimants. Inevitably, a series of
acrimonious suits arose; and at last, one of these actions, brought by John Green and others against Richard
Biddle, reached the Supreme Court of the United States. It was, like Fletcher vs. Peck (to be noted in the next
section), a generally spurious piece of litigation: Biddle did not even appear by counsel.

On March 5, 1821, Justice Story handed down a unanimous opinion by the Court. It was held that the rights and
interests of the rightful owners of the land had been secured by the agreement between Kentucky and Virginia in
1789; thus a contract had been entered into by Kentucky; under the Constitution, no State may impair the
obligations of a contract; the two acts of 1797 and 1812, in the Court’s view, materially impaired these interests;
their effect was to compel a rightful owner to pay “for improvements which he has not authorized, which he did
not want, or which he may deem useless.”(83) Under Virginia law—under common law—this could not be
sanctioned. Kentucky’s two occupying claimant laws, said the Court, were unconstitutional and void.

The decision created consternation in Kentucky. Henry Clay immediately came before the Court, as amicus
curiae, to ask—and win—a rehearing. The Constitution, Clay insisted, prohibited the States from entering into
compacts without the consent of Congress; in his view, Congress never had consented to the compact between
Kentucky and Virginia in 1789—“It was no compact: It was mere negotiation.” It was not enough that Congress

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might have acquiesced tacitly over a period of nearly thirty years; some affirmative act of congressional consent
was required.

The following October, Kentucky’s General Assembly adopted a long and generally temperate statement of
protest against the Court’s decision.(84) Here it was pointed out that the two laws in question had been approved
by Kentucky’s State courts over a long period of years. Virginia had acquiesced in Kentucky’s handling of the
matter. The decree of the Supreme Court, in this “fictitious” case, was “incompatible with the powers of the
State, and highly injurious to the best interests of the people.” Kentucky appointed commissioners to discuss the
problem with Virginia, and confidently awaited a reversal by the Court when the case was reargued.

This hope proved vain. On February 27, 1823, in an opinion by Justice Washington, the Court again declared the
acts of 1797 and 1812 invalid as an impairment of Kentucky’s compact of 1789 with Virginia. In the Court’s
view, Congress had given all the consent required by the Constitution in the act admitting Kentucky into the
Union.

From this opinion, Justice Johnson warmly dissented. Adverting to the chaotic condition of Virginia’s grants in
the post-Revolutionary period, he observed that “land they were not, and yet all the attributes of real estate were
extended to them.”(85) As often as not, these grants were no more than surveyor’s entries. In the nature of
things, Kentucky had to take some action to quiet titles: It never was intended “that Kentucky should be forever
chained down to a state of hopeless imbecility.”

Again, Kentucky reacted strongly to the Court’s decree, this time in far sharper temper than before. In
November of 1823, Governor John Adair denounced the opinion in hard-ringing words: It was not the
“incalculable litigation and distress” that would be produced by the Court’s two decisions, nor yet the pecuniary
loss to many innocent persons, that concerned him most.

The principles they would establish, and the effects they would produce, sink much deeper and would produce
infinitely more permanent evils. They strike at the sovereignty of the State, and the right of the people to govern
themselves.(86)

In December, the Assembly approved a long statement of Kentucky’s views. If the Court’s doctrines were
correct, that “one unalterable system of laws was destined to regulate, in perpetuity, the concerns of the
republics of America,” then why had not the States, on formation of the Union, been “melted down and their
existence abolished”? Was sovereignty meaningless? Were the States no more than “dwarf vassals”?(87) The
Assembly again protested firmly; and because the Court’s opinion the preceding February had been handed
down by a 3-1 count, with three justices absent, it was urged that Congress provide by statute that no question
growing out of the Constitution of the United States, involving the validity of State laws, could be decided
without the concurrence of two-thirds of the full Court.

Again in January, 1824, the Kentucky Legislature assailed the Court for an opinion “which disrobes Kentucky
of her sovereign power, and places her in a posture of degradation which she never would have consented, and
never can consent, to occupy.”(88) Gentlemen, this is Kentucky speaking:

The construction of the Court which thus disfranchises the State of Kentucky, can neither exact the homage of
the people upon whom it acts, for the intellect employed in making it, nor conciliate their patience under its
humiliating and afflicting effects. If the same privative effects were attempted to be produced upon the
individual and political rights of the people of Kentucky, by a foreign armed force, and they were not to repel it
at every hazard, they would be denounced as a degenerate race, unworthy of their patriotic sires, who assisted in
achieving the American Independence; as a people unworthy of enjoying the freedom they possessed. In that
case, the United States, too, would be bound, at whatever hazard, to vindicate the right of the people of
Kentucky to legislate over the territory of their State; to guarantee to them a republican form of government,

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which includes the right insisted on. And can it make any difference with the people of Kentucky, whether they
are deprived of the right of regulating by law the territory which they inhabit, and the soil which they cultivate,
by the Duke de Angoulème at the head of a French army, or by the erroneous construction of three of the judges
of the Supreme Court of the United States? To them the privation of political and individual rights would be the
same.

Again the Assembly denounced the manner of the Court’s decision. The mandate had been delivered by three, a
minority of the Court: “There was a fourth judge on the bench; he dissented.” Had the third agreed with the
fourth, Kentucky had not been disfranchised. Thus, in this particular case, “the political destiny of a State was
decided by a solitary judge.” Kentucky strongly demanded that Congress adopt the two-thirds rule.

But though such a bill was reported favorably by the Senate in 1824, and debated approvingly over a period of
months, in the end Congress took no action on Kentucky’s plea. In January of 1825, the Kentucky Legislature
continued to protest, more angrily now than ever, against judicial control: “If the judges possessed the purity and
wisdom of archangels, it would be unwise to concede to them the power contended for, unless they were also
immortal; for however wisely and beneficently they might exercise it, their successors might exert it wickedly
and oppressively.”(89) Was not the Constitution, in effect, the Bible of the people? Was it not their right to read
it and construe the book of faith for themselves?

Would they be bound to adopt the exposition of it by their preacher, which was at war with the fundamental
principles of their association and their creed? And which ought they to change—their creed or their pastor?(90)

Kentucky’s interposition reached its peak the following winter, when Governor Joseph Desha, in November,
1825, came before the Assembly. Reference already has been made to his denunciation of the Supreme Court,
especially in regard to its decisions in the McCulloch and Osborn cases. He also pilloried the Court for its
opinion in Green vs. Biddle, which was “spreading its baneful influences” across the State.

That same month, Kentucky’s Supreme Court added its potent strength to the State’s resistance. On November
15, having before it a case in which a claimant advanced the identical contention that Kentucky’s laws of 1797
and 1812 were void, the State court flatly refused to abide by the Supreme Court’s decree. Kentucky judges
would respect any “settled” mandate of constitutional law, they said, but Green vs. Biddle had been decided by
only three members of the Court; thus “it cannot be considered as having settled any constitutional principle.”
The Kentucky judges hinted plainly that even if the full Court had been unanimous, they still would not have
regarded the decision as having settled a point of law so plain to them.(91)

In December, the Kentucky House of Representatives supported the State judges with a bellicose resolution
addressed to the Governor: Would he please inform them of

the mode deemed most advisable in the opinion of the Executive to refuse obedience to the decisions and
mandates of the Supreme Court of the United States, considered erroneous and unconstitutional, and whether, in
the opinion of the Executive, it may be advisable to call forth the physical power of the State to resist the
execution of the decisions of the Court, or in what manner the mandates of the Court should be met by
disobedience.(92)

To this Governor Desha replied, on December 14, with a suggestion that the Assemblymen “restrain their ardor
and try yet a little while the pacific measures of an application to Congress.”(93)

That pretty well ended matters. Kentucky’s State courts and State officials continued adamantly to defy the
Supreme Court’s decision in Green vs. Biddle; titles were recorded and land conveyed according to Kentucky’s
claimant laws; and six years later the Supreme Court, in effect, surrendered. This time Justice Johnson spoke for
the majority of the court. He coolly observed that the 1823 decision in Green vs. Biddle had been

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misunderstood; and over Baldwin’s dissent, the Court upheld a seven-year limitation act, adopted by Kentucky
on title contests, which surely was as much an “impairment” of the compact of 1789 as anything that had gone
before.

Kentucky had interposed her sovereign powers; and Kentucky had remained in the Union; and Kentucky had
won.

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 10
Georgia vs. the Court
CONSIDER Georgia. And consider the Supreme Court. The one has ever been at war with the other. No State in
the Union has more clearly perceived the dangers of judicial encroachment than Georgia, and no State—into our
own time—has been more resolute in resisting them.

Attention already has been directed to Georgia’s remarkably successful interposition in the Chisholm case:
There Georgia flatly refused to abide by a decree of the Court, took the issue to the country in the form of a
constitutional amendment, and won hands down. The Eleventh Amendment today attests her success. But even
as the Eleventh Amendment was pending before the Union for ratification, a new case arose that was to pit
Georgia squarely against the Court.

This was the case of the Yazoo lands. It is so well known that only the briefest reference is necessary here.
Subsequent to 1787, by reason of an agreement between Georgia and South Carolina, Georgia became
possessed of vast lands south and west of the Savannah River extending to the Mississippi. These were the
Yazoo lands, named for a river that formed a key boundary point. One effort to dispose of this enormous area
ended abortively in 1789. But in January, 1795, a bill to dispose of the land was approved by the Georgia
Legislature and reluctantly signed by the Governor—reluctantly, because the Legislature, almost down to the
last man, had been shamefully bribed by a pack of scoundrels headed by U.S. Senator James Gunn. Under this
fraudulent act, some 35,000,000 acres of land passed into the hands of speculators for $500,000. Some accounts
place the total at 50,000,000 acres. But no account denies the total corruption of the Georgia Legislature.
Scarcely had the bill been passed before the people, suddenly shocked into awareness, turned on their venal
Legislators and threw them out of office. On February 13, 1796, the new Legislature passed an elaborate act
rescinding the sale of 1795. Under this act, every reference to the Yazoo infamy was to be expunged from the
records of the State, and any State official who thereafter took note of it was to be fined $1,000, and rendered
forever incapable of holding public office. A fire was built in front of the Capitol, and as members of the newly
chosen House and Senate filed around, a messenger of the House consigned the act of 1795 to the flames
(kindled, symbolically, from the rays of the sun, as from “the burning rays of the lidless eyes of justice”), the
while crying out, “God save the State! And long preserve her rights!! And may every attempt to injure them
perish as these corrupt acts now do!!!”

But it was not so easy a matter, as Georgia was to discover, to expunge an act obtained by “atrocious peculation,
corruption, and collusion.” For the Legislature of 1796 to void an act of the bribed Legislature of 1795, and
render it “null and void,” was to encounter the objection of John Marshall’s Court that the act of 1795
constituted a contract between Georgia and the land purchasers, which contract could not constitutionally be
impaired later on.(94) This was the gist of the Court’s famous ruling in Fletcher vs. Peck, by which it decided an
obviously contrived piece of litigation brought by a pair of Massachusetts citizens who well knew of the
potential cloud on the Yazoo title. John Peck technically sold 15,000 acres of Yazoo land to Robert Fletcher for
$3,000, covenanting that his title of 1795 was valid. Justice Johnson penetrated the spurious nature of this suit in
an acid comment that the proceeding “appears to me to bear strong evidence, upon the face of it, of being a mere
feigned case.” But John Marshall, who had no objection to looking beyond the record when it suited him, this
time stuck tenaciously to the record itself: “If the title be plainly deduced from a legislative act, which the
legislature might constitutionally pass, if the act be clothed with all the requisite forms of a law, a court, sitting
as a court of law, cannot sustain a suit brought by one individual against another, founded on the allegation that
the act is a nullity, in consequence of the impure motives which influenced certain members of the legislature
which passed the law.”(95)

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This was in 1810, fifteen years after the original Yazoo act, eight years after Georgia had ceded all claim to the
lands to the United States. But it was the first time the Supreme Court had held an act of a State
unconstitutional, and the Court’s decision aroused a bitter reaction. This hostility is in a sense paradoxical; the
Court’s opinion actually has served as a magnificent buttress for the rights of the States. Had the Court ruled
otherwise, the door would have been opened for assault upon any act of a State legislature upon contentions of
corruption or bribery. Nevertheless, Georgia wrathfully denounced the Court, and her representatives in
Congress succeeded, over a period of several years, in frustrating the claims of the Yazoo purchasers.

Resentment on this issue scarcely had died down, however, before new controversies claimed Georgia’s
concern. These involved two Indian tribes, the Creeks, and more importantly the Cherokees, which persisted in
holding lands within the territorial limits of Georgia. Getting rid of the Creeks proved sufficiently difficult.
When negotiations, petitions, memorials, and finally the Treaty of Indian Springs, in 1825, failed to dislodge
them, Georgia’s fiery Governor Troup ordered a land survey launched by which the troublesome tribe would at
last be ousted. Secretary of War Barbour, in May of 1825, advised Troup that this survey “could not be
permitted.” To this Troup replied with a message denouncing “officious and impertinent intermeddlings” with
domestic concerns.(96) “Stand by your arms,” he advised the Assembly; and the Assembly, for its part,
“approved the exhortation with its whole heart.” There followed a series of letters between Troup and Barbour,
chiefly notable for the extreme stand of State sovereignty the Georgia Governor maintained throughout. In his
eyes, the Federal government was a foreign power with whom he engaged in “diplomatic intercourse.” In his
letters to the War Department, Troup consistently requested the officer addressed to convey Georgia’s views to
“your government.”

In 1826, the United States Senate undertook to ratify a new treaty with the Creeks, more favorable to the Indians
than the one before. At this added injury, Georgia threw herself into the conflict with new zeal. Troup furiously
ordered his surveyors back to work; and when Barbour, early in 1827, threatened to use “all the means” at the
President’s command to stop it, Troup dispatched orders to the generals commanding the Sixth and Seventh
Divisions of the State Militia to hold their troops in readiness “to repel any hostile invasion of the territory of
this State.”(97) Then he wrote Barbour, with deadly effect, that from the first decisive act of hostility on
Barbour’s part, “you will be considered as a public enemy.”

He took one more step also. Anticipating that an effort would be made by the Adams administration to obtain a
ruling from the Supreme Court, upholding the President’s actions, Troup fired a message to the Georgia
Assembly. “I am not wanting in confidence in the Supreme Court of the United States,” he said, “in all cases
falling within their acknowledged jurisdiction.”

As men I would not hesitate to refer our cause to their arbitration or umpirage. On an amicable issue made up
between the United States and ourselves, we might have had no difficulty in referring it to them as judges,
protesting at the same time against the jurisdiction, and saving our rights of sovereignty. . . . But according to
my limited conception, the Supreme Court is not made by the Constitution of the United States, the arbiter in
controversies involving rights of sovereignty between the States and the United States . . . because that court,
being of exclusive appointment by the government of the United States, will make the United States the judge in
their own cause. . . .(98)

Shortly thereafter, the Federal government backed down; the surveyors continued peacefully at their assignment,
and in time the Creeks went west.

Getting rid of the 10,000 Cherokees remaining in Georgia proved still more difficult. At that time, the
Cherokees were well entrenched in what they chose to call their own “nation,” in the land now defined by
Carroll, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Hall, and Haber-sham counties. There was some substance for their claim: The
Cherokees had their own constitution, their own language, their own laws, their own courts, their own well-
advanced civilization; they exchanged what amounted to ambassadors with Washington; they entered into

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treaties with the United States. But Georgia was not impressed by these amenities: The Cherokees occupied land
that was plainly Georgia’s land, and the Federal government, in Georgia’s view, was doing nothing effective to
remove them.

As one consequence of this resentment, Georgia in December, 1828, adopted an act extending her own criminal
jurisdiction into the Cherokee territory. (A rumored discovery of gold in the Cherokee lands probably had
something to do with this.) And soon thereafter, a nondescript Indian named George “Corn” Tassels was
arrested under Georgia law, convicted of murder, and sentenced to be hanged. His counsel appealed to the
United States Supreme Court, and the Court thereupon commanded Georgia to appear and make answer. The
peremptory tone of Marshall’s order was a mistake: It aroused all the smoldering hostility of a proud and
impatient people. Governor Gilmer, who had succeeded to the office, said flatly that Marshall’s order “will be
disregarded; and any attempt to enforce such order will be resisted with whatever force the laws have placed at
my command. If the judicial power thus attempted to be exercised by the courts of the United States is submitted
to, or sustained, it must eventuate in the utter annihilation of the State governments, or in other consequences
not less fatal to the peace and prosperity of our present highly favored country.” The Georgia Assembly
vigorously supported him. In a resolution adopted in 1830, it declared that the right to punish crimes against the
peace and good order of the State “is an original and a necessary part of sovereignty, which the State of Georgia
has never parted with.” The Assembly viewed Marshall’s interference as “a flagrant violation” of Georgia’s
rights, and directed the Governor and all other State officers “to disregard any and every mandate and process
that has been or shall be served upon him or them purporting to proceed from the Chief Justice, or any associate
justice, . . . for the purpose of arresting the execution of any of the criminal laws of this State.” More ominously
still, the Assembly directed Governor Gilmer “to resist and repel any and every invasion, from whatever quarter,
upon the administration of the criminal laws of this State” with all the force and means placed at his command.

Tassels was forthwith hanged, on Christmas Eve of 1830.(99) There seemed to be nothing more to be said.

Two days prior to Tassels’ demise, the Georgia Legislature adopted further laws designed to extend State
jurisdiction over the Cherokee territory. The most important of these provisions undertook to prohibit any white
person from residing in the Cherokee lands after March 1, 1831, without specific permission from the Governor.
Meanwhile, the Cherokees had attempted to invoke the aid of John Marshall’s Supreme Court, and had won his
sympathy but not his jurisdiction.(100) Marshall had termed the Cherokees not a nation, but rather a dependent
domestic territory; the Chief Justice was not willing (considering President Jackson’s views and the
demonstrated hostility of Georgia) to attempt to “control the legislature of Georgia, and to restrain the exertion
of its physical force.”(101)

This opinion came down on March 18, 1831. Meanwhile, a band of Presbyterian missionaries, headed by Elizur
Butler and Samuel A. Worcester, had deliberately settled in Cherokee land without consent of Governor Gilmer.
The missionaries were arrested, brought on for trial in Gwinnett County, convicted, and sentenced September
15, 1831, to four-year terms in prison for violation of the December enactment. They appealed to the Supreme
Court, and in January, 1832, Marshall ordered the convictions reversed.(102) But Governor Lumpkin, a
gentleman imbued with the spirit, and succeeding to the office, of Troup and Gilmer, bluntly refused to release
them. It was at this time—the comment is most probably apocryphal—that Jackson was said to have remarked,
“John Marshall has made his decision—now let him enforce it.”(103) It was not until two full years later that the
missionaries, having sought pardon, were released. In their first application, they made the tactical error of
saying that there had been no change in their views “in regard to the principles on which we have acted.” To
this, Governor Lumpkin replied that if they regarded these principles so highly, “they might stand on them in the
penitentiary.” The desperate missionaries then wrote from the Milledgeville prison, apologizing, and at long last
were released.

Georgia’s defiance of the court led both Massachusetts and Connecticut, in the spring of 1831, to adopt
resolutions commending the Supreme Court and criticizing Georgia’s resistance. These good New England

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States had forgotten that fifteen or twenty years earlier, they too had resisted Federal authority in what seemed
to them a palpable encroachment upon their rights. But they must have been impressed, even as they adopted
their resolutions, by the self-evident fact that in the Tassels case and in the Worcester case, Georgia had
interposed; and Georgia had remained in the Union; and Georgia had won.

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 11
Calhoun and Nullification
THE GREAT nullification controversy of 1832 goes to the heart and soul of the constitutional doctrines
advanced in this essay, and, as a consequence, must be treated at some length. In the interests of an orderly
presentation, it is proposed first merely to chronicle what happened in this period, and to touch briefly upon the
great personalities who figured in that drama; secondly, it is proposed to argue the essential soundness and
constitutionality of nullification, when it is invoked as a last resort against dangerous and deliberate usurpations
of authority by the Federal government.

The second act adopted by the First Congress of the United States, in 1789, was a tariff law which imposed
duties on “goods, wares and merchandise imported.” Significantly, the act recited that its purpose was not alone
to raise revenues for the support of government and the discharge of public debts, but also “for the
encouragement and protection of manufactures.”(104) From that day until comparatively recent times,(105)
students of the Constitution have vigorously debated the authority of Congress to utilize its taxing power beyond
the aim of raising revenue. This first tariff law was so mild in its provisions, however, that few serious
apprehensions were aroused; it was not until the tariff of 1816, imposing duties averaging about 20 per cent
upon the covered imports, that a few cries of alarm began to be heard.(106) Again, these protests were not
loud—Calhoun himself supported the tariff of 1816 (in an impulsive speech he was to regret all his life), and
later was agreeable to accepting it as the basis for a permanent law.(107) But with the sharply increased tariff of
1824, which very nearly doubled the average rates of 1816, all the latent fears of free traders were aroused. The
higher tariffs imposed a severe hardship upon Southern States especially: Cotton shirts, woolen blankets, and
other staple items of an agrarian society, became suddenly more expensive, and this at a time when the South
had virtually no industries of its own that might benefit from a protectionist policy.

At first, the protests of the Southern States were firm but temperate. South Carolina resolved, in December of
1825, that “a right to impose and collect taxes, does not authorize Congress to lay a tax for any other purposes
than such as are necessarily embraced in the specific grants of power, and those necessarily implied
therein.”(108) The following March, Virginia spoke through her Assembly: “The imposition of taxes and duties,
by the Congress of the United States, for the purpose of protecting and encouraging domestic manufactures, is
an unconstitutional exercise of power, and is highly oppressive and partial in its operation.”(109)

Advocates of high protective tariffs were firmly in the saddle, however, and though the woolen interests lost an
important bill by Calhoun’s tie-breaking vote in February of 1827, the enthusiasm generated by the
protectionists’ “Harrisburg Convention” the following summer set in motion an irresistible force. In
considerable alarm, South Carolina’s Assembly spoke up with new resolutions in December of that year: Tariff
laws designed not to raise revenue or to regulate commerce but for “the promotion of domestic manufactures,”
are “violations of the Constitution in its spirit, and ought to be repealed.”(110) A week later, Georgia raised a
truculent and sarcastic voice: “While manufacturing companies and self-created delegates, pretending to
represent whole States, assemble for the purpose of directing the Congress what measures they must adopt,
surely the Legislature of a State, without much violence to any known rule of modesty, may respectfully offer a
counter remonstrance to such a growing temper of dictation.” And then, putting subtlety aside: “An increase of
Tariff duties will and ought to be RESISTED by all legal and constitutional means, so as to avert the crying
injustice of such an unconstitutional measure.”(111)

North Carolina, in January of 1828, interposed her objections: “The People of North Carolina . . . have seldom
expressed a legislative opinion upon the measures of the general government.” But now, “a crisis has arisen in
the political affairs of our country, which demands a prompt and decisive expression of public opinion.”
Whenever policies of the Federal government strike “at the very foundation of the Union, it is the right of every

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member of the Confederacy to call their attention to the fundamental principles upon which the government was
formed.” Should the offensive policies be persisted in, then “the question may fairly be discussed . . . whether
the benefits of the Union are not more than counterbalanced by the evils.” In North Carolina’s considered view,
Congress might have the naked power under the Constitution to impose a tariff for protective purposes, but such
tariffs were a “direct violation of the spirit of that instrument.” Manufactures, in their essence, were not objects
of general welfare but of local interest; and to protect the woolen interests of New England, at the price of an
enormous tax upon the agriculture of the South, would be “fatal to the happiness, the morals, and the rights of a
large portion of our common country.”(112)

Alabama also spoke up: “Let it be distinctly understood that Alabama, in common with the Southern and
Southwestern States, regards the power assumed by the General Government to control her internal concerns, by
protecting duties beyond the fair demands of the revenue, as a palpable usurpation of a power not given by the
Constitution.” And Alabama pledged “the most determined and unyielding resistance” to this effort “to pamper
the gentlemen wool-growers and wool-carders of the Northeast . . . at a time when agriculture is languishing and
prostrate, yielding a bare support to those who pursue it.”(113)

To these warning cries from the South, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Indiana, and New
York responded with resolutions of their own, defending the policy of protective tariffs and indeed urging
higher levies.(114) The Northeastern forces prevailed. On May 19, 1828, Congress adopted what came to be
known thereafter as the “Tariff of Abominations.” Measured by any yardstick, it was a bad bill. The tariff on
woolens climbed again, but the act was so rigged that on the cheaper grades of woolen cloth, a tax of nearly 200
per cent was imposed. To the Southern farmer, the act imposed disastrous burdens on hemp, cotton bagging,
iron, clothing for slaves. Just as the embargo and non-intercourse laws, twenty years earlier, had heavily
damaged the economy of New England, so the Tariff of Abominations, coinciding with other adverse factors,
now caused intense hardship among the agrarian States.

Again the aggrieved South erupted with protesting resolutions, but at this point a new and powerful force began
to be felt: It was the intellect and leadership of John Caldwell Calhoun. He had become Vice-President in March
of 1825, after seven years in Monroe’s Cabinet as Secretary of War. Now, in the administration of John Quincy
Adams, he sat brooding, solitary, upon the rostrum of the Senate. Beneath him, his old mentor, mad Jack
Randolph, eloquently denounced the protective tariff as an infringement upon the sovereignty of States. Day
after day, debate raged upon the nature of the Union, and day by day Calhoun’s concern grew deeper for some
means by which the rights of a minority of the States—or even a single State—might be protected from the
tyranny of a majority.

In the spring of 1827, Calhoun came home. He had been in Washington for almost sixteen years, living first in a
boarding house, later in the gracious brick mansion in Georgetown Heights that would be known as Dumbarton
Oaks. He was badly in need of a rest, of a period of quiet away from the tensions of Washington. Hence he came
home to the quiet land of Up-Country Carolina, to the Seneca River, to the peaceful fields of Pendleton District.
He came back to his white-pillared home at the crest of a hill, and there he did something few men in public life
find time to do today: He sat and thought, undisturbed, gazing across the fields, now rising to consult a book or
document, now composing a letter to Littleton Waller Tazewell in Norfolk, but mostly he engaged in that
hardest of all exercises: Pure thought. What was the nature of the Union? Where was sovereignty, he asked
himself, and what was sovereignty, and how was it exercised? How could a “great local interest” be
preserved?(115)

Out of those long days of thought and reading and correspondence, that summer of 1827, there began to emerge
a pattern. If the federal character of the Union were to be maintained, then the dignity of the respective States
must be maintained. At some point, he came to realize, there must be a power inherent in the nature of each
member State by which it could protect its constitutionally reserved rights without withdrawing from the Union.

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The following summer, with the Tariff of Abominations now written into law, Calhoun came home again. He
found all South Carolina in ferment. The leaders of the State were not talking of petitions or compromise; they
were talking openly of secession. Among them was the colorful George McDuffie, a tall, slender man, possessed
of passionate convictions in the field of States’ rights and gifted with an eloquent voice to defend them. Another
was Charleston’s “Jimmy Hamilton,” who four years later, as Governor, was to face the enraged Andrew
Jackson with a spirit as resolute as Old Hickory’s. A third was twenty-one-year-old James H. Hammond, in time
to edit the nullification paper, the Southern Times. And present at Fort Hill in spirit, as Margaret Coit wrote, “if
not in his fat, aging flesh,” was that fascinating old Republican, Thomas Cooper, who had come to South
Carolina after his conviction at the hands of Justice Chase for sedition nearly thirty years before.(116)

Calhoun swiftly came to realize that if the hot-blooded agitation of the secessionists were not channeled into a
calmer course, a resort to arms was imminent. Hence, as Vice-President, he employed the device Jefferson had
employed in espousing the Kentucky Resolution in 1798, and for the same reason: Vice-Presidents, are, or were,
to be seen and not heard. In secrecy, Calhoun drafted the South Carolina Exposition and Protest. Though it was
not formally adopted by the South Carolina Assembly,(117) it was published under legislative authority. Its
impact upon South Carolina, though somewhat delayed by the length of the document and the difficulties of
Calhoun’s prose style, ultimately was to have the greatest significance.

In the Exposition(118) Calhoun devoted himself first to the problems of an agricultural South, whose people had
become “serfs” to the industrial North. The South would not complain, he said, of a moderate tariff which
afforded incidental protection: “We would rejoice to see our manufacturers flourish on any constitutional
principle consistent with justice.” But the tariff of 1828 was neither constitutional nor just. It was a device
through which a majority in Congress had utilized their powers as “an instrument of aggrandizement.” In this
process, they had gravely encroached upon the rights of the States, but—and here the doctrine of nullification in
its most drastic form was asserted for the first time—the States had one remedy remaining to them: They could
invoke their inherent right “to interpose to protect their reserved powers,” and by interposing, suspend the
operation of a law they regarded as unconstitutional pending a decision by all the States in convention
assembled.

Whatever may be said of South Carolina, and of the many Southern farmers and small businessmen who
approved her Exposition, a lack of forebearance cannot be attributed to them. Calhoun’s striking doctrine of
State powers went forth in December of 1828. Nearly four years elapsed before South Carolina, her patience at
last exhausted, pursued the remedy Calhoun had outlined.

Meanwhile, a dozen States had engaged in a battle of resolutions over the tariff and the theory of interposition.
Georgia had called upon the States to unite in “a policy of self preservation” in a “continued and strenuous
exertion to defeat that general pernicious and unconstitutional policy, contemplated and pursued by the
advocates of the tariff.” Mississippi, in February of 1829, had agreed that the tariff should be resisted “by all
constitutional means.” The same month, Virginia had revived her Doctrine of ’98: “The Constitution [is] a
Federal compact between sovereign States, in construing which no common arbiter is known,” thus “each State
has the right to construe the compact for itself.” On the opposite side, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Delaware, New
Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, Louisiana (where sugar interests predominated), and most notably, Kentucky, had
replied in language almost equally strong.(119) Kentucky’s resolution of January 27,1830, may especially be
noted; it summarized the objections most generally voiced against the Calhoun doctrine:

The General Assembly of Kentucky cannot admit the right of a minority, either of the States or of the people, to
set up their opinion not only in opposition, but to overrule that of the majority. . . . The consequences of such a
principle, if practically enforced, would be alarming in the extreme. . . . If one State had a right to obstruct and
defeat the execution of a law of Congress because it deems it unconstitutional, then every State has a similar
right. . . .

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The Kentucky resolution conceded that, of course, there may be acts of government of such extreme oppression
as to justify an appeal to arms—but this was not asserted by South Carolina in protesting the tariff law. On the
contrary, it was South Carolina’s position that without going to war or seceding, South Carolina could suspend
the operation of the tariff within her jurisdiction. In Kentucky’s view, this could not be sanctioned. Nor was this
position in 1830 inconsistent with Kentucky’s more famed Resolutions of 1798 and 1799: In protesting the
unconstitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts, “it neither interposed nor threatened the adoption of any
measures to defeat or obstruct their operation within the jurisdiction of Kentucky.” The Assembly in 1798 had
expressed, in very strong language, its disapprobation of the laws and its firm conviction that they were
unconstitutional and void.

There it stopped, and that is the limit which no State should pass, until it has formed the deliberate resolution of
lighting up the torch of civil war. Every State, as well as every individual, has the incontestable right freely to
form and to publish to the world its opinion of any and every act of the Federal government. It may appeal to the
reason of the people, enlighten their judgements, alarm their fears, and conciliate their support, to change
Federal rules or Federal measures. But neither a State nor an individual can rightfully resist, by force, the
execution of a law passed by Congress.(120)

These objections on the part of Kentucky will be considered hereafter. It is best, at this point, simply to hew to
the chronology of events. Thus it may be noted that during the years immediately following the Exposition of
December, 1828, the spirit of nullification grew rapidly in South Carolina. McDuffie and Hamilton and Hayne
were aided by Robert J. Turnbull’s belligerent essays, gathered together in The Crisis, or Essays on the
Usurpations of the Federal Government, which gained wide circulation following their publication as the letters
of “Brutus” in the Charleston Mercury. Many other prominent Carolinians joined the nullification movement.
They were opposed, from the beginning, by a strong Unionist group, but the continued deprivations blamed
upon the tariff brought recruits in increasing numbers to Calhoun’s camp.

James Madison, meanwhile, was busily engaged in denying the very theories he had espoused so warmly thirty
years before. In a stream of public letters, he insisted that Virginia’s Resolution of 1798 gave no sanction to
South Carolina’s doctrine.(121) As a pointed reply, South Carolina’s Legislature, in December, 1830, adopted a
resolution quoting verbatim from the first four paragraphs of the Virginia Resolution and the first paragraph of
the Kentucky Resolution, in order to make its point that whenever a State has lost all reasonable hope of redress
from Federal departments, “it will be its right and duty to interpose, in its sovereign capacity, for the purpose of
arresting the progress of the evil occasioned by the said unconstitutional acts.”(122)

In the summer of 1831, President Jackson, whether unwittingly or deliberately, added fuel to the fire. He had
been invited to attend a dinner in Charleston on July 4. To this invitation he responded with a letter severely
criticizing nullification as leading to “disorganization” of the Union. At its first opportunity, the embittered
South Carolina Assembly responded with a strong resolution declaring that if by “disorganization” Jackson
meant “disunion,” no constitutional or legal authority imposed any duty on the President to prevent it. “This is a
confederacy of sovereign States, and each may withdraw from the confederacy when it chooses; such
proceedings would neither be treason nor insurrection nor violation of any portion of the Constitution. It is a
right which is inherent in a sovereign State, and has not been delegated by the States of this Union.” Should
South Carolina, exercising her deliberate judgment, acting in her sovereign capacity, declare an act of Congress
unconstitutional, “that judgment is paramount—and if the Executive, or all the combined departments of the
general government endeavor to enforce such enactment, it is by the law of tyrants, the exercise of brute
force.”(123)

Less than three weeks after the publication of Jackson’s reply to the dinner invitation, Calhoun brought forth, on
July 21, 1831, his justly renowned “Fort Hill Address.” If the student of State and Federal relations, interested in
Calhoun’s beliefs, is able to read one of Calhoun’s papers only, he would do well to read this clear and cogent
statement. It may be found in Volume Six of Calhoun’s Works, though it is widely available elsewhere.

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The following summer, Congress undertook to amend the hated Tariff of Abominations, but its act of July 14,
1832, accomplished no significant changes. To the rebellious Carolinians, their last chance of congressional
redress had passed. On the Charleston Battery and up and down Meeting and King streets, the blue cockades of
the nullifiers flourished. Calhoun, by this time thoroughly identified, publicly and privately, with the
nullificationist cause, added fresh ammunition in a long and clearly reasoned letter to Governor Hamilton.(124)

By the fall of 1832, no influence other than Calhoun’s despised “metaphysics” could have prevented a violent
secession by South Carolina. Hamilton, a brigadier general in the militia, was busily engaged in problems of
gunpowder and logistics; groups of “volunteers” were ready to make war for the defense of South Carolina’s
rights. President Jackson, never one to pass up a fight, ordered General Winfield Scott to Charleston and
directed that a special guard be maintained at Fort Sumter.

In this tense situation, the best thing that could have happened was what did happen. Pursuant to a call of the
Legislature, a convention of the people of South Carolina met at Columbia on November 19, 1832. The
ordinance they adopted on November 24 is the final and most drastic expression of the right of a State to
interpose against Federal encroachment. It was not the “State government,” let it be emphasized, that here acted;
it was rather a convention of the people, speaking with the voice of ultimate sovereignty, that declared the tariff
acts of 1828 and 1832 “are unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning
and intent thereof, and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers, or citizens.” Again,
this was not a “resolution”; it was styled an “ordinance.” Here the people, sovereign, made law for their State:
All judicial proceedings in affirmance of the tariff acts “shall be hereafter . . . utterly null and void.” After
February 1, 1833, all enforcement of the tariff acts was to be suspended in South Carolina. Should any cases in
law or equity be decided in South Carolina State courts, involving the authority of the convention’s ordinance or
the validity of the tariff acts, no appeal was to be allowed to the Supreme Court of the United States, nor was
any copy of a court record to be permitted for that purpose. Should Federal officials retaliate by employing
naval forces against South Carolina, or attempting to close her ports, such action would be viewed “as
inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union.” South Carolina then would hold
herself absolved from all ties of the Union, and her people would “forthwith proceed to organize a separate
government, and to do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do.”(125)

On November 27, the South Carolina Assembly reconvened and speedily passed a series of acts to implement
the ordinance. And on December 10, Jackson issued his blistering proclamation (largely composed by Edward
Livingston) denouncing nullification, denying the sovereignty of States, and pledging force to compel obedience
in South Carolina to the laws of Congress.

This proclamation left the South Carolinians unimpressed. On December 20, the Assembly adopted further
resolutions, describing Jackson’s opinions as “erroneous and dangerous.” And in a pointed aside, the Assembly
noted that Jackson’s statement “is the more extraordinary, in that he had silently, and as it is supposed, with
entire approbation, witnessed our sister State of Georgia avow, act upon, and carry into effect, even to the taking
of life, principles identical with those now denounced by him in South Carolina.” Insisting upon the right of
peaceable secession, in the last resort, the resolution denied Jackson’s power to employ force to keep South
Carolina in the Union, and declared that the Legislature “regards with indignation the menaces which are
directed against it, and the concentration of a standing army on our borders.” It was resolved that South Carolina
“will repel by force, and relying upon the blessings of God, will maintain its liberty at all hazards.”

Now, it should be made clear, in the interests of a fair presentation of these events, that other States—even other
States in the South—strongly disapproved the course taken by South Carolina. Massachusetts, Ohio, and
Delaware promptly rejected South Carolina’s invitation for a convention to consider Constitutional amendment;
Delaware, joined by Maryland and New Jersey, declared that questions of contested power should be settled in
the Supreme Court, as a tribunal expressly provided for the settlement of controversies between the United
States and the respective States. New York and Pennsylvania, among others, declared expressly against the right

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of secession. Even belligerent Georgia termed nullification “neither a peaceful, nor a constitutional remedy.”
Alabama, though agreeable to a convention, termed it “unsound in theory and dangerous in practice . . . leading
in its consequences to anarchy and civil discord.” North Carolina, again denouncing the protective tariff, thought
nullification “revolutionary in its character,” and “subversive of the Constitution.” Mississippi regarded the
doctrine as “heresy, fatal to the existence of the Union.”

If these replies disheartened South Carolina, it was not evident in the determined preparations she made to
enforce her ordinance. Calhoun, distraught, saw his hopes for a peaceful settlement glimmering. Word spread
that Jackson, his temper high, had promised to have 100,000 troops in South Carolina in three months’ time.
Indeed, Jackson had grimly threatened, in several conversations, to hang Calhoun “as high as Haman.” It was in
this taut situation that Calhoun resigned as Vice-President in order to accept appointment to the Senate,
succeeding Hayne; and on December 22, 1832, he set out for Washington and a head-on clash with Jackson.

The rest of this story is quickly told. Once Calhoun took his seat in the Senate, quiet negotiations toward a
settlement became possible. Under the aegis of Clay, a compromise tariff bill was worked out. It passed the
House on February 26, the Senate on March 1; simultaneously, Jackson’s “Bloody Bill,” a Force Act, also was
approved.(126) Meanwhile, word was relayed to Charleston for the nullifiers to wait upon Congressional action.
When the compromise yielded substantially what South Carolina had demanded,(127) the November ordinance,
so far as it related to the tariff acts, was repealed. And within a few years, as it will be noted hereafter, the very
States that had denounced South Carolina so strenuously for direct and plain-spoken nullification of Federal acts
were busily engaged themselves in effective nullification of the laws and the Constitution in the matter of
fugitive slaves.

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 12
The Case for Nullification
AT THIS point, it is proposed to pause in this review of State and Federal conflicts, in order to argue the basis,
the soundness, and the wisdom of the constitutional doctrines of John Calhoun. In undertaking this task, the
author of these notes asks of his readers no more than the open mind which he himself brought to the subject at
first encounter some months ago. To one reared in the custom of docile obedience to Federal authority, to the
tradition of a strong “national” government, Calhoun’s cold and logical reasoning comes with the shock of an
icy plunge.

Because the best exposition of this argument is Calhoun’s own exposition, let us go first to his Fort Hill Address
of 1831. “The great and leading principle,” he began, “is that the general government emanated from the people
of the several States, forming distinct political communities, and acting in their separate and sovereign capacity,
and not from all the people forming one aggregate political community.”

The evidence in support of that proposition already has been marshaled, and seems undeniable: The colonies,
under British rule, were separate colonies; with the Revolution, they declared themselves individually “free and
independent States.” As separate and distinct States they entered into the Articles of Confederation. As separate
and distinct States they bound themselves under the new Constitution in 1787 and 1788. At no time did “we the
people,” meaning the people en masse, take any action affecting the creation of the Union; at every juncture, the
people acted solely as people-of-States. Had the States abandoned this proud characteristic of individual
sovereignty, it is reasonable to believe that their act of divestiture would have been set forth, at some point, in
unmistakable terms. No such evidence can be adduced. On the contrary, the plain language of the Constitution
shows repeatedly that the States formed a “Union.” Under this compact, their sovereignty was not surrendered,
and only certain of their sovereign powers were granted or delegated. The States were the principals in this
agreement; they created a common Federal government whose powers were to be derived solely from the
Constitution—and the power of amending the Constitution they reserved solely to themselves.

If this be granted, that the Federal government emanated from the States, and the premise scarcely can be
challenged, Calhoun’s second premise flows directly from the first: In any compact among equal parties, each
party to the compact has an equal right to judge for itself if the compact be violated. Is this not the rule of
international law? Is it not, on a more mundane basis, the everyday rule of ordinary commerce? A, B, and C
enter into a partnership by which X is made their agent and trustee as to certain affairs. If X oversteps his
authority, and treads upon the rights reserved by one of the contracting parties, who is to allege a violation of the
compact if it be not the aggrieved party himself? And if A believes that he has been wrongfully treated—if he
believes the infraction is truly of a grave and serious nature—what is his remedy? He submits the dispute to B
and C; surely it is not for X to decide, for the trustee, however powerful, is no party to the compact.

As in the world of commerce, so among the States: Doubtful assertions of authority by the Federal government,
inconsequential invasions of the rights of contracting States, unimportant differences of opinion—these may be
dismissed with mild objections, or may be tacitly accepted. Love of the Union lies deeply engrained in the
people; their affections are long suffering. But what is to be done, in the last resort, when remonstrance fails and
protests go unheeded in matters of the most vital nature? “In the case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous
exercise of power not delegated,” said the Virginia Resolution, and said Calhoun, the States in the last resort
have a right “to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits,
the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them.” This right of interposition, said Calhoun,

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I conceive to be the fundamental principle of our system, resting on facts historically as certain as our revolution
itself, and deductions as simple and demonstrative as that of any political or moral truth whatever; and I firmly
believe that on its recognition depend the stability and safety of our political institutions.

What are the consequences, Calhoun inquired, of the opposite doctrine, which holds that the States have no such
right to protect their reserved powers? Inevitably, it must be conceded that this is to vest in the Federal
government—whether in the President, the Congress, or the Supreme Court, it matters not—the right of
determining, exclusively and finally, the powers delegated to it. In Jefferson’s phrase, this is to make the
discretion of Federal office holders, and not the Constitution the measure of the powers of Federal agencies. It
means that the States, having created the Constitution and bound themselves by it, are in practical effect unable
to pass finally on the meaning of their compact. The people, meaning the people-as-States (which is the only
meaning to be given to the term “people” as employed in the Constitution), no longer control; they are
controlled. And by this theory, the whole meaning and foundation of our government must be destroyed.

Let it be inquired, Calhoun asked, what is the object of a Constitution? Plainly, he replied, the object of a
Constitution is to restrain the government, as that of laws is to restrain individuals.(128) And the necessity for a
restraint upon the abuses and excesses to which all governments are inclined, arises largely from the fact that the
governed people have dissimilar interests and concerns. Were all the people alike, and all interests of a
community identical, no such restraints would be required; a simple majority division would justly decide every
question submitted to it. But this identity of interest does not exist among the several States who jointly form the
American Union. From the very inception of the Republic, the different States zealously have cherished
differing institutions: To one, foreign trade may be vital; to another, domestic manufactures; to a third,
agriculture; to a fourth, water power and irrigation; to a fifth, the operation of public schools and parks. It is only
to a limited extent that these most vital concerns may be subordinated to the “national good.” At some point,
Calhoun argued, compromise must end and oppression begin. And it is “to guard against the unequal action of
the laws, when applied to dissimilar and opposing interests, in fact, what mainly renders a constitution
indispensable.”

This recognition of the diversification and contrariety of interests among the States of the American Union lies
at the essence of our Constitution. That was the whole purpose of delegating to the central government, as it was
thought, only those powers supposed to be necessary “to regulate the interests common to all States,” while
reserving to the States respectively (the adverb is of the keenest significance) the control of those interests of a
local character. By this means, the interests of the whole were to be subject to the will of the whole, while the
peculiar interests of a particular State were to be left to its own people exclusively. “This distribution of power,
settled solemnly by a constitutional compact, to which all the States are parties, constitutes the peculiar character
and excellence of our political system.”

The question next must be asked, how is this perfect distribution of powers to be maintained? There is but one
mode, replied Calhoun, by which such political organization can be preserved— “the mode adopted in England,
and by all governments, ancient and modern, blessed with constitutions deserving to be called free”—

to give to each co-estate the right to judge of its powers, with a negative or veto on the acts of the others, in
order to protect against encroachments the interests it particularly represents: a principle which all of our
Constitutions recognize in the distribution of power among their respective departments, as essential to maintain
the independence of each, but which, to all who will duly reflect on the subject, must appear far more essential,
for the same object, in that great and fundamental distribution of powers between the General and State
governments. So essential is the principle, that to withhold the right from either, where the sovereign power is
divided, is, in fact, to annul the division itself, and to consolidate in the one left in the exclusive possession of
the right all powers of government; for it is not possible to distinguish, practically, between a government
having all power, and one having the right to take what powers it pleases. [Emphasis is in the original.]

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Calhoun’s argument still holds good. It may be fairly assumed that it is not the will of the American people, or
of the States as such, that the Federal government simply should “take what powers it pleases.” We are not yet
so conditioned to despotic rule. On the contrary, our political system still holds, however perilously, to a
division of powers between State and Federal authority. And should the State and Federal governments come
into serious conflict—into a clash that imperils the most essential institutions of a State—what is to be done?
Are the alternatives two only: Submission, or arms? Is the choice truly confined to an acceptance of tyranny on
the one hand, or a resort to the sword on the other? Every consideration of reason, common sense, and
constitutional theory demonstrate that in a civilized and enlightened society, disputes are not to be so resolved.

We must examine, then, the various remedies that may be suggested. Our supposition is that Congress has
enacted a bill, or the President has issued an executive order, or the Supreme Court has entered a decree clearly
not authorized by the Constitution, the effect of which, if consented to, would be to endanger or destroy a
plainly reserved power of a State. The question first must be asked, is not every such unconstitutional act
absolutely void, and void ab initio? Obviously it is, and on the highest authority of our law. Are the States, then,
bound to submit to laws or decrees which are unconstitutional and void? No such obligation can be inferred. On
the contrary, it would appear that those States which refuse to submit to them are right, and that other States,
undertaking to compel submission and to coerce obedience to usurped power, are guilty of oppression of the
worst sort.

But it is asked, who is to ascertain that the purported law or decree is in fact a palpable and dangerous violation
of the Constitution? The answer most commonly given is that the Supreme Court, under the Constitution, is
appointed the common umpire in conflicts between State and Federal authority. But this is plainly and
demonstrably not so. The Court derives its powers, just as its co-equal branches of the Federal government
derive theirs, from the Constitution and from the Constitution alone. Let Article III be read from first to last, and
not the first phrase will be found by which the jurisdiction of the Court may be implied over political contests
between the States and the Federal government, each claiming a contested power. As we have noted earlier,
precisely this power was suggested for the Court during the Convention of 1787, and was emphatically rejected.

Three reasons may be advanced to support the assertion that the Court is not, in fact, the common umpire in
such contests.

First, the powers of the Court are judicial, not political, and under the Constitution extend primarily to cases in
law and equity. The Court’s jurisdiction over “controversies to which the United States shall be a party” never
was regarded by the framers of the Constitution as authority in the Court to decide questions of political contest.
It was not until 1890, more than a century after the ratification of the Constitution, that the Supreme Court
claimed jurisdiction in any suit brought by the United States against a State—in this case, a suit against North
Carolina to recover upon bonds issued by that State.(129) As recently as 1935, the Court refused to accept
jurisdiction in a proceeding sought by the Federal government against West Virginia to determine the
navigability of the New and Kanawha rivers, on the ground that its jurisdiction did not extend to the
adjudication of differences of opinion between officials of the two governments.(130)

Not until the Tidelands Oil cases of 1947 and 1950, in a drastic overreaching of its powers, did the Court
undertake to snatch the very authority that properly had been denied it.(131) The Tidelands question did not
involve any petty question of bonds or any minor controversy over a boundary(132) or any inconsequential issue
of title to particular tracts.(133) It involved a grave contest of power between the coastal States and the Federal
government on an issue that, in the view of many leaders of those States, seriously affected their most vital
interests.

Secondly, it is regrettably clear, even as Madison foresaw in his report of 1799, “that dangerous powers, not
delegated, may not only be usurped and executed by the other departments, but that the judicial department may
also exercise or sanction dangerous powers, beyond the grant of the Constitution.” It is not to be supposed, in

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this democratic republic, that our Congressmen are mortal, but our judges divine. To regard the Court as the sole
expositor of the Constitution and to vest in it the unchecked power not merely to interpret but substantively to
amend the Constitution, is to relinquish unto a majority of the judges the sovereign power reserved to not fewer
than three-fourths of the States. On this theory, the Court, by advancing specious reasons or no reasons at all,
could in one bold move blot out the veritable existence of half-a-dozen States that displeased the judges; and the
States would be powerless to resist effectively.

Thirdly, it is not to be forgotten that the Supreme Court, by the very nature of the instrument creating it, is a
portion of the Federal government itself. It is the judicial branch of the trinity whose other branches are the
Presidency and the Congress. Just as the President is the executive representative of this general government,
and the Congress its legislative representative, so is the Court its judicial representative. The Justices are
confirmed by a majority of the Senators, which is to say, by a majority of the States; they can be removed, if at
all, only by a majority of the States. And in Calhoun’s phrase: “To confide the power to the judiciary to
determine finally and conclusively what powers are delegated and what reserved, would be, in reality, to confide
it to the majority, whose agents they are, and by whom they can be controlled in various ways; and, of course, to
subject . . . the reserved powers of the States, with all the local and peculiar interests they were intended to
protect, to the will of the very majority against which the protection was intended.”

Littleton Waller Tazewell, a great Virginia jurist, made the same point in a series of essays in which he
demolished Jackson’s proclamation of December, 1832: “Can the human mind conceive a more audacious
proposition,” he asked, “than that which suggests that in a controversy between the parties to a covenant [under
which] an agent is created, where the matter in dispute . . . regards the authority exerted by the agent, the
decision of this controversy must be referred to the agent himself?”(134) What would have been the result, in
the matter of the Sedition Act, if it may be supposed, first, that the act carried no expiration date, and secondly,
that the Federalists had retained control of the House and refused to consent to its repeal? The Federalist
judges—Chase, Paterson, Washington—already had held this wickedly unconstitutional law to be valid. An
appeal by the States, on behalf of their gagged and persecuted people, surely would have been vain had it been
addressed to the Court: The judges would have been asked to decide if the judges themselves had done right.

Before completing this phase of the discussion, a hostile witness may be called—the widely regarded Edward
Livingston of Louisiana, Secretary of State under Jackson, a member of the Senate during the Webster-Hayne
debates, principal author of Jackson’s proclamation. “I think,” he said, “that by the institution of this
government, the States have unequivocally surrendered every constitutional right of impeding or resisting the
execution of any decree or judgment of the Supreme Court, in any case of law or equity, between persons, or on
matters, of whom, or on which, that court has jurisdiction, even if such decree or judgment should, in the
opinion of the States, be unconstitutional.” But then Livingston, who strongly opposed Calhoun’s theory of
nullification, went on to concede that

in cases in which a law of the United States may infringe the constitutional right of a State, but which in its
operation cannot be brought before the Supreme Court, under the terms of the jurisdiction expressly given to it
over particular persons or matters, that court is not created the umpire between a State that may deem itself
aggrieved and the General Government. [Emphasis supplied.](135)

What is to be deduced from Livingston’s fuzzy thinking? First, that in cases, the Court is the supreme and final
umpire, though the effect of its judgment upon the parties may be to deprive the State of what the State regards
as its constitutionally reserved power; but secondly, if no case can be devised, the Court is not the umpire at all.
But whence comes this limitation of the court’s jurisdiction to cases? Why, as we have seen, from Article III of
the Constitution. It is, then, the Constitution that controls the Court; it is, as it ever must be, the Constitution that
is the supreme law of the land. But if the Constitution is over the Court, who or what finally is over the
Constitution? It can only be the States, who under Article V alone have the power to amend or rewrite it. How,
then, may it be urged that the States “unequivocally surrendered” the control of their most fundamental rights, in

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the last resort, to a Court they themselves created? So trusting a confidence in fallible man is unknown in human
affairs; it cannot be imputed to the great men who as delegates of States drafted the Constitution.

Let us return, now, to a further inquiry into the alternative courses said to be available to a State, or several
States, whose most vital institutions have been imperiled by an act or a decree regarded as unconstitutional.
What we are seeking, it must be emphasized, is a peaceable remedy within the Union, and within the framework
of the Constitution.

Livingston, in this same speech, suggested that an aggrieved State may resist in this way: (1) By remonstrating
to Congress against the act; (2) by an address to the people, in their elective functions, to change or instruct their
Representatives; (3) by a similar address to the other States, in which they will have a right to declare that they
consider the act as unconstitutional, and therefore void; and (4) by proposing amendments to the Constitution, in
the manner pointed out by that instrument.

But it must be evident that petition and remonstrance to Federal authority are vain, for such petitions are
addressed to the source of the oppression itself; nor is a suppliant posture to be expected of a free people before
their government. Neither can it be expected that an “address to the people” would achieve the desired end, or
that mere resolutions, dispatched to the Legislatures of other States, could arrest the evil complained of. The
proposing of constitutional amendments is fine, and to be presumed in every case of major contest, but is the
proposing of amendments sufficient?

None of Livingston’s remedies will answer, in the grievous and dangerous case supposed, and for this reason:
None of them serves to arrest the progress of the evil. They are paper locks for barn doors when horses have
been stolen. Before the most eloquent remonstrance could move an oppressor to provide relief, before the most
justified amendment to the Constitution could be proposed by the Congress (assuming that two-thirds of the
members of each house could be persuaded promptly to act upon it), before a new President could be chosen to
appoint new judges to be confirmed by new Senators—the mischief would be done, the challenged liberty
irretrievably lost, the cherished institution overthrown beyond restoration.

In the phrase, “to arrest the progress of the evil” lies the whole end and purpose of State interposition. The evil,
as Abel Parker Upshur observed long ago, “is the exercise of an usurped power.” The aim is to suspend this
usurpation alone, within the limits of the objecting State, and thus to force a decision by the arbitrament of the
ultimate umpire—the sovereign people themselves, acting in their respective States. In the grave and
extraordinary crises for which outright nullification may be invoked, said Calhoun, “the States themselves may
be appealed to, three-fourths of which, in fact, form a power, whose decrees are the Constitution itself, and
whose voice can silence all discontent.” And he added:

The utmost extent, then, of the power is, that a State acting in its sovereign capacity, as one of the parties to the
constitutional compact, may compel the government, created by that compact, to submit a question touching its
infraction to the parties who created it.

The alternative is to give to the Federal government “the sole and final right of interpreting the Constitution,
thereby reversing the whole system, making that instrument the creature of its will, . . . and annihilating, in fact,
the authority which imposed it, and from which the government itself derives its existence.”

Now, Calhoun emphasized throughout his writings, as did Jefferson, that it is not to be supposed that this drastic
remedy would be lightly invoked. Jefferson, late in his life, undertook to correct the impression that the States
are subordinate to the Federal government. “This is not the case,” he said—

They are coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. But you may ask, If the two departments
should claim each the same subject of power, where is the umpire to decide between them? In cases of little

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urgency or importance, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it
can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power
to that department which they may think best.(136)

So, too, with Calhoun: “The spirit of forbearance, as well as the nature of the right [of nullification] itself,
forbids a recourse to it, except in cases of dangerous infractions of the Constitution; and then only in the last
resort, when all reasonable hope of relief from the ordinary action of the government has failed; when, if the
right to interpose did not exist, the alternative would be submission and oppression on one side, or resistance by
force on the other.” So, also, it will be recalled that Madison emphasized, in the Report of 1799, that an
infraction of the Constitution must be “deliberate, palpable and dangerous.” Interposition, he said, is not to be
invoked “either in a hasty manner or on doubtful and inferior occasions.” It can be called for by the States only
on those occasions that “deeply and essentially affect the vital principles of their political system.”

It is perfectly true that, under Calhoun’s reasoning, a determination of the gravity of the infraction, and of the
mode and measure of redress, remains with each respective State. Like every other right known to man, the
“right to interpose” is susceptible to abuse. It was Jackson’s criticism, in the December proclamation, that if a
State may declare one law to be void, it could pick and choose those laws it would obey, and those it would
defy. And meanwhile, every other State would be making the same capricious choice, and all government would
collapse in disorder.

Yet while this is possible, it is by no means probable, and the reverse must be considered also: If power-hungry
Federal judges may impose one unconstitutional mandate, they may impose a thousand, each more oppressive
than the one before, until all liberties are extinguished. No one imagines that this will happen, though it is a
plain fact that Federal inroads upon State responsibilities are progressing at an alarming pace.

Neither should it be imagined that Calhoun’s right to interpose, if it were accepted fully into our political
system, would be arbitrarily and frivolously invoked. Upshur, in his beautifully composed letters of 1833,
provided the clearest answer on this point:

Although governments are primarily founded in distrust, yet there is, of necessity, some degree of confidence in
all of them. The wisest statesman can do no more than repose that confidence in the safest hands, while at the
same time, he surrounds it with all practicable safeguards against abuse. If the States may abuse their reserved
rights in the manner contemplated by the President, the Federal government, on the other hand, may abuse its
delegated rights. There is danger from both sides, and as we are compelled to confide in the one or the other, we
have only to inquire, which is most worthy of our confidence.

It is much more probable that the Federal government will abuse its power than that the States will abuse theirs.
And if we suppose a case of actual abuse on either hand, it will not be difficult to decide which is the greater
evil.

If a State should abuse its right of interposition by arresting the operation of a constitutional law, the worst that
could come of it would be to suspend the operation of the law, for a time, as to that State, while it would have all
its effects within the other States. This would certainly be unjust, but in most cases, would be attended with very
little practical evil.

Besides, according to the doctrine for which I am contending, this evil would be temporary only; it must cease
in some way or other, as soon as the other States act upon the subject. I acknowledge, however, that it is at best
an evil, but it is an evil inseparable from our system, and one which cannot be avoided except by submitting to a
greater evil.(137)

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May it be earnestly submitted, to those friends of constitutional government who are concerned at the
aggrandizement of the Federal government, that careful consideration be given to Calhoun’s reasoned doctrines?
They rest upon the structure of the Union itself as a Union of co-equal States, in which each State rightfully
should be responsible for the management of its most intimate domestic concerns; yet his doctrines do not deny
to the Federal government one iota of the power and authority delegated to it by the Constitution.

Were the powerful weapon of State interposition carried by the States as a well-sheathed sword, its very
existence would exert upon Federal departments a restraining influence of incalculable value. The judge,
contemplating some bold engraftment on the fundamental law, could be expected to ask himself: Will this be
acceptable to three-fourths of the States should an infraction be charged? The Congress, proposing to seize
from a few States the control of their own natural resources, might pause in its ambitious course if there were
reason to believe that an appeal would be taken, as from a ruling of the chair, to the source of ultimate
sovereignty. Yet the States themselves, for their part, it may be imagined, seldom would risk an immediate and
decisive rebuke by their brethren for interposing on light or unwarranted grounds. Year after year, it would be
supposed, the States would accept the interpretations placed upon their Constitution by the Court, and would
acquiesce without objection in the acts of Congress; indeed, for the past half-century, they have done so with
few exceptions.

The object must be to preserve in the hands of the people, which is to say in the people of the States, some
effective power that may be utilized, in great and extraordinary instances, by which an asserted usurpation of
power may be checked, suspended, and submitted for decision to the principals in the constitutional compact.
John Calhoun, building upon the foundation of Madison and Jefferson, offered a means by which that object
may be attained. His adversaries have offered nothing.

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 13
The Personal Liberty Laws
WE MAY now resume, may it please the court, a discussion of those instances of particular State interposition,
by which it may be discerned that every portion of this Union, at some point in its history, has recognized the
imperative necessity of a State veto upon acts of the Federal government.

In commencing this section, it ought not to be necessary to make one disavowal:(138) The author of these notes
utterly disclaims any affection or admiration for the detestable institution of human slavery that cursed the South
for a century and a half. It was an abominable custom, indefensible in any light; no one could condemn it more
severely than this citizen of Virginia. As many objective students of Southern history have fairly noted, the
citizens of an older Virginia condemned it also. Governor Randolph, addressing the Virginia Convention of
1788, grimly described Virginia and North Carolina as “both oppressed with debts and slaves.”(139) George
Mason, in addressing the Virginia convention, referred to the “nefarious” and “detestable” and “disgraceful”
slave trade,(140) but Mason foresaw, as many others did not, the “Northern and Eastern States meddling with
our whole property of that kind.”(141)

For a correct understanding of Mason’s apprehension, it is necessary to shift some mental gears violently, in
order to comprehend an economy, in our own country, revolving entirely around slave labor. We must recall that
there was a time, nauseously distasteful as the thought may be, when many of the finest and most cultured
leaders of our Republic owned slaves and rather helplessly defended slavery. They trafficked in human beings,
bought and sold them like cattle. There is no condoning it now.

But for the purposes of this essay, it must also be comprehended that the Constitution of the United States
specifically sanctioned slavery. Nailed into our fundamental law were three provisions that in 1787 were
essential to the adoption of any Constitution whatever: It was provided in Article I that representation in the
House would be based upon “the whole Number of free Persons . . . and . . . three fifths of all other Persons.” It
was further provided that “the Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall
think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year 1808.” And it was provided,
finally, in Article IV, that

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found
in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to
be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in
Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be
delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

Those provisions related expressly to the slave trade and to slavery. They were a part of the many compromises
that had to be made in order to assure ratification of the compact—but more than that: Once ratified, they
became a part of the fundamental constitutional law of the Union, as respectable at law, as binding upon the
States and the people, as any provision relating to the coinage of money or the election of Senators. It is in that
light that these clear and unmistakable provisions are viewed here: Stripped of moral values, and considered
only as binding law.

With that understanding, it may be noted that among the earlier acts of Congress was the Fugitive Slave Act of
February 12, 1793, by which the foregoing constitutional provisions were implemented with legislation clearly
“necessary and proper” to carry them out.(142) From the very beginning—even from the Northwest Ordinance

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in the prior Congress of 1787, abolition of the slave trade was widely urged. Prior to 1810, half-a-dozen
States—among them North Carolina, Maryland, and Tennessee—proposed constitutional amendments toward
that end. An act providing for an end to this traffic, with the expiration of the constitutional limitation in 1808,
received overwhelming support. Yet even among those who condemned slavery most severely, the ugly practice
was recognized unhappily as an inescapable part of the economy of the affected States.

Various schemes were devised to ameliorate the condition. Most prominent among these was the colonization
plan, which early had the support of Jefferson and late the support of Lincoln. As far back as 1802, the General
Assembly of Virginia could be found urging that land be acquired, in Africa or South America, for colonization
of free Negroes.(143) In 1816 and 1817, States as far apart as Georgia and Vermont endorsed the proposal.
Indeed, the idea came and went over a period of nearly forty years, as Pennsylvania, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana,
Connecticut, and Massachusetts one by one approved it.

Yet the colonization plan, if it were desirable in theory, proved unacceptable in practice. Nothing came of it, and
in time the sponsors fell out. Meanwhile, other events came along that served to drive a terrible wedge between
the States. The bitter fight of 1819-20 over the admission of Missouri saw at least nine States (Vermont, New
Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Ohio and Indiana), strongly
interceding against any terms of admission by which slavery might be extended.(144) Their opposition, as New
Jersey and Vermont freely conceded, was not on moral grounds alone: Every 1,000 voteless slaves in Missouri
would be counted as 600 free citizens in providing representation in the House of Representatives. The question
was political as well as moral. But it was a constitutional question also, as Virginia, among others, repeatedly
pointed out: Every new State, entering the Union, necessarily had to be admitted with exactly the same equal
rights and privileges that obtained to every other State. It could not be otherwise.

The wrath of the North, and the resentment of the South, were further aroused in this period by the almost
incredible outpourings of the abolitionist press. William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator began publication in Boston
January 1, 1831, but it was merely the best known of a hundred publications that began to flood the country. “I
do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation,” said Garrison,(145) and he set the tone for the others.
To the Southern States, these violently inflammatory newspapers and pamphlets were a serious and dangerous
aggravation.(146) The white residents, in many areas overwhelmingly outnumbered by their subject slaves,
justifiably feared insubordination or insurrection; they dreaded the “torch of the incendiary, and the dagger of
the midnight assassin.”(147) And they were heartily outraged by “officious and impertinent intermeddling with
our domestic concerns.”(148) After all, as South Carolina grimly pointed out, “The evils of slavery have been
visited upon us by the cupidity of those who are now the champions of universal emancipation.”(149)

In a spirit of desperate self-preservation, many of the Southern States embarked upon a program of retaliation.
Following a potentially disastrous Negro uprising in Charleston in May of 1822, South Carolina adopted a
“Negro Seaman’s Act,” the effect of which was to deny free Negroes, arriving as crew members aboard sailing
vessels, permission to land at South Carolina ports. Virginia earlier had adopted a somewhat similar law,(150)
and in time other seaboard States were to follow. New England ship owners angrily protested the law, and in the
fall of 1833 arranged a test case of its provisions. Mr. Justice Johnson promptly declared the South Carolina
statute unconstitutional. He was not interested in South Carolina’s anxieties and fears: “The plea of necessity is
urged,” he said, “and of the existence of that necessity, we are told, the State alone is to judge. Where is this to
land us? Is it not asserting the right in each State to throw off the Federal Constitution at its will and pleasure? If
it can be done as to any particular article, it may be done as to all, and, like the old Confederation, the Union
becomes a mere rope of sand.”(151) Yet South Carolina, in the face of this decision, continued to enforce her
law.(152) Indeed, two years after Johnson’s opinion, South Carolina added some fresh teeth to it.(153) Alabama
and Florida, and later Louisiana and Georgia, in 1842, paralleled the statute. And the offended New Englanders,
in a gesture not wholly appreciated, dispatched missions southward to arrange fresh test cases. Mr. Samuel
Hoar, when he explained his purpose in South Carolina, was abruptly expelled from the State by legislative
resolution.(154) A mission to Louisiana met the same inhospitable treatment.

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But meanwhile, Northern States were far more industrious in seeking to nullify both Constitution and courts.
Very early in the period, they began to adopt what were known as “Personal Liberty Laws”—State statutes
designed shrewdly and deliberately to nullify the Federal Fugitive Slave Act. That this was their intention, few
Northerners denied; that the enactments presented an outright defiance of law was generally conceded. Even the
great Webster, no friend of slavery or the South, once commented of Southern outcries against the personal
liberty laws, “The South, in my judgment, is right, and the North is wrong.”(155) The laws took a dozen
ingenious forms. The Southern slave-owner, who came North seeking his escaped servant or farmhand, was
susceptible of arrest himself on a trumped up charge of “kidnapping.” Should the slave-owner actually capture
his fugitive, it was necessary for him to prove ownership by the most elaborate evidence— presented before a
jury of hostile abolitionists. State officials were prohibited under pain of heavy punishment from cooperating in
any way in enforcement of the Federal act. It was made a serious misdemeanor for any person to assist in the
recapture of a fugitive slave. In Vermont, all fugitives were declared automatically free men; any person who
attempted to detain such a fugitive thereafter made himself liable, on conviction, to a prison term of five to
twenty years or a fine of up to $10,000.(156)

All told, fourteen respected and honored Northern States engaged in this prolonged, and generally successful
interposition of their sovereign powers. Let the roll be called: Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, Illinois, Indiana,
Wisconsin. Theirs was a planned and deliberate program of nullification, pursued with relentless vigor, in
defiance of the Constitution, over a period of nearly forty years. Each of them enacted laws willfully intended to
veto the Act of Congress of 1793, and to render nugatory any effort to enforce it. As rapidly as their acts were
held unconstitutional,(157) they enacted new evasions, or simply ignored the court decrees.

This steadfast resistance to the Constitution, as might be surmised, led to some angry conflicts between the
States. Virginia for example, tangled bitterly with New York, when New York’s Governor Seward refused to
surrender three men charged with stealing slaves. Repeated requests for their extradition, phrased in the most
respectful terms, went unanswered, and finally Virginia’s Governor Gilmer lost his temper. Seward’s refusal, he
declared, was “monstrous.”(158) It was “a palpable and dangerous violation of the Constitution and laws of the
United States . . . [which] cannot be acquiesced in.”(159)

New York, unimpressed, added injury to insult by enacting in 1840 a new and more ingenious Personal Liberty
Law than any the State had adopted in the past.(160) To this Virginia retaliated, in 1841, with “An act to prevent
citizens of New York from carrying slaves out of the Commonwealth.”(161) And Gilmer, still aroused, also
refused to surrender a forger to New York until Seward chose to return the slave-stealers. Notably, Virginia’s
General Assembly regarded this action on Gilmer’s part as dishonorable, censured him for it, and accepted his
resignation from office. Virginia’s act of 1841, which required an inspection of every New York vessel (at the
ship owner’s expense), to make certain no slaves were being carried away, was repealed by Virginia’s Assembly
in 1845.(162)

An even more dramatic conflict arose between Georgia and Maine, involving a twenty-two-year-old slave by the
name of Atticus who turned up, in May of 1837, aboard the schooner Susan, bound for Maine. According to the
ship’s master, Daniel Philbrook of Camden, and the mate, Edward Kelleran of Cushing, the slave was a
stowaway. According to the aggrieved owners, James and Henry Sagurs of Chatham County, Georgia, the two
seamen had kidnapped him. In any event, the Brothers Sagur obtained a boat of their own, and began a chase at
sea. The Susan put on canvas and outran them back to Maine.

When finally the well-winded Georgians reached Maine and obtained a warrant for Atticus’ recovery, the Negro
had disappeared. Not until they offered a reward was the slave found, concealed in a barn in Thomaston.
Attempting to take him into custody, the Sagurs encountered a crowd of abolitionists; they were “pelted by the
populace, and . . . with difficulty escaped from the fury of the mob.” However, they did manage to get Atticus
back to Savannah.(163)

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The Sagurs’ next step was to swear out a warrant, in Georgia, charging Philbrook and Kelleran with kidnapping.
In June of 1837, Georgia’s Governor William Schley formally requested their extradition, but Maine’s Governor
Robert P. Dunlop, a long-jawed fellow with a deceptively placid look about him, declined on a number of
technical and legalistic grounds. In the fall, Georgia met these objections, but Dunlop still declined to return the
two men for trial. In December, Georgia’s Legislature wrathfully adopted a resolution denouncing Dunlop for
failing to perform “the sacred duties which are imposed upon him” by the Constitution, and especially for
resisting Georgia’s constitutional request “at a time when the minds of the people of the South are justly excited,
and their feelings most wantonly outraged, by the machinations of certain fanatics in the North.”

In Maine, the portly, white-haired Edward Kent succeeded Dunlop as Governor, but proved equally deaf to
Georgia’s protestations. Late in 1838, the Georgia Legislature met again, and a special committee pondered
what might be done about the situation. One recommendation was that Georgia close all her ports to vessels
from Maine, but on mature reflection, it was agreed that under the Constitution this was impossible. A
committee member offered a second proposal: To seize upon visitors from Maine and hold them hostage until
the felons were returned. But while that might not be unconstitutional, “it would be unjust.” A third possibility,
solemnly, if briefly considered, was for Georgia to declare war on Maine—but Heaven forfend! “Long, long
may it be before the States of this Union shall be involved in civil conflict!” What, then, was to be done? The
frustrated committee, “although strongly disposed to recommend the passage of a law imposing quarantine upon
all vessels coming into our waters from Maine,” ultimately settled merely for further, and stronger, resolutions
directed toward Maine. If these failed, a State convention should be called “to devise the course for her future
policy.”

These resolutions failed. Kent continued to ignore Georgia’s resolutions, and perhaps for an understandable
reason: Maine had troubles closer at hand, in what almost became a shooting war with Great Britain on her
northern boundary. The dispute dated from the period immediately following the War of 1812, when the British
claimed the whole of the upper part of the valley of St. John, above the 46th parallel. Maine claimed the same
territory under the Treaty of 1783. The residents of Madawacka, evidently regarding themselves as citizens of
Maine, sent representatives to the State Legislature, and otherwise identified themselves with Maine. But to
New Brunswick authorities, the Madawackans were British citizens.

These claims and counter-claims led to a series of border incidents, climaxed in the summer of 1837 when a
congressional agent, sent to the town to take a census in order to distribute the famed Federal surplus of 1836,
was summarily arrested by a British constable and clapped in jail. Governor Dunlop, declaring that Maine’s soil
had been invaded by a foreign power, prepared for the State to go to war against England on its own—as the
State, lest it be forgotten, constitutionally had (and still would have) a right to do.(164) The British backed down
before Dunlop’s bellicose preparations, released the agent, and arranged for an arbitration. Unhappily, the
arbitrator, William, King of the Netherlands, accepted neither the boundary line urged by the British, nor the
line contended for by Maine: He drew a line of his own, which satisfied no one. Maine was further aggrieved
when Van Buren’s pussyfooting administration proposed to give Maine 1,000,000 acres of land, to be taken
from what now is Michigan, in exchange for the territory Maine would lose under the arbitration award. Maine
declined.

Soon afterwards, as border incidents became more aggravated and Van Buren seemed disposed to do nothing
more, Governor Kent brought matters to a head. The State’s sovereignty had been outraged; her appeals to
Washington had proved fruitless. Now Kent was prepared to recommend that Maine “throw herself entirely
upon her own resources, and maintain, unaided and alone, her just rights, in the determined spirit of free men.”
The indignant Legislature backed him by appropriating $800,000, and Kent promptly ordered 10,000 militiamen
called out. Within a week they were on their way to Aroostook County, under the command of General George
W. Bachelder. At this, Congress hastily came to life, added its own appropriation of $10,000,000 and the
President sent General Winfield Scott and his staff packing off to Augusta. Scott fortunately proved to be an
able peacemaker; both sides withdrew their troops and released their prisoners, and the bloodless Aroostook

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War finally was settled in 1842 by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. In time, of course, Maine’s dispute with
Georgia also was settled, but hostility against Maine did not subside in Savannah for generations.(165)

Much resentment also arose over the hotly contested question of annexing Texas—not only as a slave State, but
as a previously independent Republic. Connecticut branded the proposal “an alarming encroachment upon the
rights of free men.”(166) Maryland termed it “a flagrant violation of the Constitution.”(167) Ohio, pointing out
that the Constitution contained no provision “for incorporating foreign nations,” protested hotly.(168) Vermont
demanded that Texas be barred unless every State in the Union consented to the annexation, and declared that
for her own part, she would never assent to so “flagrant a violation of the national compact.”(169) Michigan,
Illinois, and Maine, also interposed objections in 1845, but perhaps the most violent opposition to the admission
of Texas came from Massachusetts: “Under no circumstances whatever can the people of Massachusetts regard
the proposition to admit Texas into the Union in any other light than as dangerous to its continuance in peace,
prosperity, and in the enjoyment of those blessings which it is the object of free government to secure.”(170)
And significantly, Massachusetts subsequently vowed that “such an act of admission would have no binding
force whatever on the people of Massachusetts.”(171) (Emphasis supplied.)

Texas was admitted, of course, in December of 1845, but the broader controversy roared on. Throughout the
1840’s, Northern States continued to encourage the escape of Negro slaves, and to harass the slave-owners in
every attempt to recover them. In Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, armed mobs forcibly took slaves from their
Southern masters, evidently with the tacit approval of local law enforcement officers. Occasionally these
measures encountered a frown from the Supreme Court; in Pennsylvania, one Prigg, attempting to return a
Negro woman, Margaret Morgan, to her owner in Maryland, was indicted for violation of Pennsylvania’s
personal liberty law, but on Prigg’s appeal to the Supreme Court Justice Story resoundingly held the State law
unconstitutional.(172)

The only result, however, was that Pennsylvania in 1847 passed a new Personal Liberty Law, as ingenious as the
one before. Massachusetts, fourteen months after Story’s decision, contemptuously adopted a law providing that
“No judge of any court of record in this Commonwealth . . . shall take cognizance or grant a certificate in cases
that may arise under the third section” of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793.(173) Sheriffs and constables were
prohibited by the Massachusetts Legislature from detaining fugitive slaves, under penalty of a fine of up to
$1,000. Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, and Michigan followed this example. It was as if Story and the
Court had never spoken.

There was little enough the protesting Southern States could do about it. In one outburst of annoyance, in 1855,
the Arkansas Legislature proposed, in effect, to sever diplomatic relations with Ohio: It was proposed that “all
social and commercial” intercourse be halted. Kentucky also tangled bitterly with Ohio. The Constitution
explicitly provided, said Kentucky, that “a person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime,” i.e:,
a slave charged with the felonious crime of escaping, “shall on demand of the executive authority of the State
from which he fled, be delivered up.” The Constitution also provided explicitly that no fugitive slave, escaping
into another State, “shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or
labour, but shall be delivered up.” Yet when Governor Dennison of Ohio adamantly refused to obey this
mandate, the aged Chief Justice Taney, speaking for the Court, was compelled to admit that neither the
Constitution nor the fugitive slave laws provided “any means to compel the execution of this duty.” And the
Court thought it clear that the Federal government, under the Constitution, has no power to impose on a State
officer, as such, any duty whatever, and compel him to perform it.(174)

The case that provoked the greatest uproar, of course, was the Dred Scott case. It arose in this fashion: Scott was
born in Virginia, the son of slave parents, and taken by his master to Missouri about 1827. In 1835, Scott was
sold to Dr. John Emerson, an army surgeon, who took him the following year to Rock Island, in Illinois, and a
year or so later to Fort Snelling, in what is now Minnesota. In 1838 Dr. Emerson returned to St. Louis, bringing

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with him Scott, Scott’s wife (a slave woman, Harriet, whom he had married at Fort Snelling), and the slave
couple’s daughter Eliza, who had been born aboard the steamboat en route back to Jefferson Barracks.

Within the next few years, Dr. Emerson died, willing his slaves to his wife. Then, in July, 1847, Scott brought
suit in the Missouri State courts against Mrs. Emerson, seeking his freedom. His contention was that having
been taken from slave territory into free territory, he had gained the status of a free Negro and could not
thereafter be returned to slavery. One jury trial resulted in a verdict against him, but on retrial he was successful.
The Emerson estate appealed, and the Missouri Supreme Court reversed the trial court and declared Scott still a
slave.

At some point in this period, Mrs. Emerson remarried. Her new husband was Dr. C. C. Chaffee, a Republican
abolitionist from Massachusetts, who represented his State in Congress. In one sense, his wife’s slave property
might have been embarrassing to him; but in a more useful sense, the Negroes offered the opportunity for a
cause célèbre. Thus, a dummy sale was arranged, by which the Scott slaves (there was another daughter by this
time, Lizzie, born in Missouri) were conveyed to Mrs. Emerson-Chaffee’s brother, John F. A. Sandford (or
Sanford) of New York.(175) And in 1853, a fresh proceeding was filed in the Scotts’ behalf, this time in the
Federal Circuit Court at St. Louis. A jury found against Scott, and the case went up to the Supreme Court of the
United States.

On March 6, 1857, Chief Justice Taney handed down the Court’s 7-2 decision. The Court first tackled the
jurisdictional question. Federal courts had authority to hear suits brought by “citizens of different States.” Was
Scott a “citizen” within the meaning of the Constitution? The Court’s ruling—and its legal correctness has not
been effectively challenged—was that Scott was not a citizen. It is impossible to quarrel with this finding: Under
the Constitution of the United States, and under the laws and constitutions of a dozen other States both North
and South, Negroes at that time were not, politically, persons at all; they were property. Scott himself, born in
Virginia of slave parents, had no right to sue in a Federal court.

Having decided that question, the Court might have stopped, routinely affirmed the Circuit Court, and dismissed
the case. But in one of the greatest judicial blunders in the Court’s history, the judges pushed on to other hotly
controversial questions. Thus they examined the plaintiff’s claim to freedom by reason of Scott’s travels with
Dr. Emerson in 1837 and 1838; this led them to a consideration of the power in Congress to prohibit slavery in
territories. Finding that no such power was vested in Congress by the Constitution, the Court gratuitously held
the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (which meanwhile had been repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854)
to have been unconstitutional.

Some able students of the Dred Scott case have argued persuasively that it was, in fact, necessary for Taney and
his associates to consider these questions—not as to Scott, but as to the child, Eliza. She had been born on the
steamboat Gypsie, in the Mississippi River north of Missouri. The law of Illinois extended to the middle of the
channel; the law of the territory held sway on the other. Which applied? Or did it matter?(176) Yet the almost
unwavering tradition of the Court is to avoid large constitutional questions when they are not absolutely
essential to a decision, and the weight of criticism holds that the Court needlessly expanded its opinion. In the
judgment of Edward S. Corwin, the decision was a grave “abuse of trust” on the Court’s part.(177) Charles
Warren, perhaps the ablest Court historian this country has produced, agrees that a serious “loss of confidence”
in the Court was caused by the decision.(178)

Overnight, the eighty-year-old Taney and his brothers encountered an outpouring of abuse and vilification
unmatched by anything voiced in any Southern State in our more effete times.(179) Nor was this hurricane of
protest confined to newspaper columns or to the chambers of Congress. The purpose of this essay is to treat the
formal and official interposition of States against what they have regarded as Federal usurpation. Thus attention
may be directed to the action of respectable and law-abiding Vermont: Its Legislature resolved, in November of
1857, that the Court’s opinions “upon questions not contained in the record in the Dred Scott Case, are extra

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judicial and political, possessing no color of authority or binding force, and that such views and opinions are
wholly repudiated by the people of Vermont.” And to buttress this assertion, Vermont declared anew, the
following October, that the doctrines laid down by the Court “are a dangerous usurpation of power, and have no
binding authority upon Vermont, or the people of the United States.”(180)

We may look, also, to the respectable State of Maine. One month after the decision came down, the Legislature
of Maine solemnly declared the Court’s opinion “extra-judicial,” and “not binding, in law or in conscience,
upon the government or citizens of the United States.” The right of each State to determine the political rights of
her citizens “is clear and indisputable, and is to be exercised without question by any other State.”(181)

So, too, in Massachusetts. Perhaps her citizens of today will find interest in this declaration by their General
Court of 1858:

Resolved, that while the people of Massachusetts recognize the rightful judicial authority of the Supreme Court
of the United States, in the determination of all questions properly coming before it, they will never consent that
their rights shall be impaired, or their liberties invaded, by reason of any usurpations of political power by said
tribunal. . . .

Resolved, that no part of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Scott vs.
Sandford, is binding, which was not necessary to the determination of that case.(182)

Many other examples might be cited. Ohio, on April 17, 1857, denounced the Court’s decision as a “palpable
and unwarranted violation” of the Constitution. New York declared the opinion “has impaired the confidence
and respect of the people of this State” in the Supreme Court. All told, twenty-two States interposed against the
Court, not only with resolutions declaring the opinion void, but with fresh laws effectively to make it so.

For a final note on Northern nullification, we may turn to Wisconsin, and to a night in March of 1854. A fugitive
slave, one Joshua Glover, had been taken into custody at Racine by a United States marshal, Ableman, for
violation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. A mob of citizens gathered outside the jail where he was confined.
Then an intensely anti-slavery editor, Sherman M. Booth of the Wisconsin Free Democrat, took leadership of
the crowd. In one angry wave, they stormed the jail, and released the slave.

Booth was arrested on March 11, and charged in Federal District Court with violation of Federal law. But he at
once applied to the Wisconsin State Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus, and Judge A. D. Smith of that
court promptly ordered him released. The Fugitive Slave Act, said the full court in affirming his action, was
unconstitutional and void.(183)

The persistent Marshal Ableman again arrested Booth, and in January, 1855, succeeded in having him tried and
convicted in the Federal court. He was sentenced to one month in prison and fined $1,000; but again, the
Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered him discharged on a writ of habeas corpus. This time the United States
Supreme Court intervened: Chief Justice Taney issued a writ directing the State Supreme Court to send up a
record of the case. The Wisconsin court flatly disregarded the order.

It was not until March of 1857, the month of the Dred Scott decision, that the United States Attorney was able to
procure a clerk’s copy of the record in the Booth case; and it was not until December, 1858, nearly four years
after the storming of the jail at Racine, that the Supreme Court overruled the Wisconsin State court and ordered
Booth returned to Federal custody.(184) But once more, the Wisconsin court refused to comply with the
Supreme Court’s decree. The State Legislature warmly supported the court’s resistance, and to make this plain,
passed a new and more defiant Personal Liberty Law. It also, in March of 1859, more than half a century after
Jefferson and Madison had brought forth the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, adopted a resolution that
vigorously approved the old Doctrine of ’98. The Supreme Court’s action in the Booth case, said the Wisconsin

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Legislature was “an arbitrary act of power, unauthorized by the Constitution . . . without authority, void, and of
no force.” [Emphasis supplied.] And we may especially note the paragraphs that followed. Gentlemen, this is
Wisconsin speaking, as recently as 1859:

Resolved, That the government formed by the Constitution of the United States was not the exclusive or final
judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties
having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode
and measure of redress.

Resolved, that the principle and construction contended for by the party which now rules in the councils of the
nation, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop
nothing short of despotism, since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the
Constitution, would be the measure of their powers; that the several States which formed that instrument, being
sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infractions; and that a positive defiance
of those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done or attempted to be done under color of that instrument, is
the rightful remedy.(185)

Now, it is not the intention of the author of these few notes to erect a large sign, saying “moral,” at the end of
every section. This is no fable for children, of goose and gander. It is perhaps sufficient to say, by way of
summary, that over a period of nearly forty years, in issues relating to the slavery question, States both South
and North effectively nullified the Federal Constitution, and acts of Congress, and the decrees of the Supreme
Court. In the South, as in South Carolina and Florida, this interposition took the form of State laws prohibiting
the ingress of free Negro citizens, State laws preventing the delivery of United States mail termed “incendiary,”
and State laws (as in Georgia and Virginia) hampering seagoing trade with other States.

Far more serious, because it was more systematically and vigorously pursued, was the interposition of Northern
States through their Personal Liberty Laws. In absolute defiance of both Court and Constitution, they contrived
to nullify the fundamental law. Yet their contention, vehemently expressed throughout this period, was that they
were proceeding in full accord with the Constitution. They took the view, as in New Jersey in 1852, that “the
Constitution was a compact between the several States.” They insisted, as in Massachusetts in 1855, that the
Federal Fugitive Slave Law was a “direct violation” of the Tenth Amendment. And they repeatedly avowed
their right to resist laws and decrees which they viewed as palpably unconstitutional.

This point alone will be renewed: If Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Ohio, Wisconsin, and their neighbors were
wrong then, it may be supposed that Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia, in resisting the Supreme Court’s
school decree, are wrong now. But if the Northern States were right then, in resisting and opposing what they
regarded as encroachments upon sovereign rights, then it equally may be supposed that the South is right today.

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 14
The Obligation of Contracts
THE SLAVERY issue, and the hotly contested questions of personal liberty laws, were not the only
constitutional issues in the ante bellum period to be involved in conflicts between State and Federal authority.
Controversies arising out of a provision in Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution (“No State shall pass any law
impairing the obligation of contracts”) persistently saw the States and the Supreme Court at loggerheads.

This prohibition was among the relatively few direct prohibitions laid upon the States by the original
Constitution. It was first asserted by Marshall, in the Yazoo controversy.(186) It was dramatically expounded in
Webster’s famed Dartmouth College case (“It is a small school, but there are those who love it”).(187) It was
refined in the States’ favor in a Rhode Island case,(188) and again interpreted—a bit tremulously—in the States’
behalf in a suit involving New York’s bankruptcy law in 1827.(189) But it was not until the years immediately
preceding and following the War of 1861-65 that the provision led to seriously recurring conflicts between State
and Federal authority. For the purpose of these notes, which are intended to sketch representative instances of
official interposition by the States of their sovereign power, it will suffice to call attention to certain disputes in
Ohio, and in the Midwest.

Here we may begin by observing that one of the greatest problems of the expanding American frontier lay in the
establishment of a sound banking system. Some of the problems of the Banks of the United States have been
described, but the travails of individual State and private banks were equally severe. It was in an effort to
stimulate the organization of sound banks that Ohio, in 1845, adopted a law providing, among other things, that
a tax would be imposed of only 6 per cent on a bank’s earnings; this tax was to be “in lieu of all taxes to which
the company, or its stockholders therein, would otherwise be subject.” Pursuant to this law, some one hundred
fifty banks rapidly came into existence.

But in 1851, a new Legislature undertook to rewrite the act of 1845, in order to place banks on the same footing,
taxwise, with other enterprises. This would have meant a substantial increase in their taxes, and understandably,
the banks protested. Their contention was that the act of 1845 had created a contract between the State and the
banks; the act of 1851 had impaired the obligation of that contract; therefore, the act of 1851 was
unconstitutional. The argument was to occupy the United States Supreme Court for more than a dozen years.

The position taken by the State of Ohio was substantially this: The Legislature of 1845 could not have bargained
away forever the taxing power of the State. “If they had attempted it, would it not have been treason—treason of
the blackest sort?”(190) The constitutional prohibition against impairment of contracts never was intended to
embrace the tax laws of a State, or indeed any enactments of a State legislature. John Marshall’s rule in the
Dartmouth College case was “subversive of the rights of the people, at war with the principles of our
government, and fraught with mischief incalculable.”(191) It was “an ill-considered and insupportable
dictum.”(192) No power of sovereignty was more vital than the power to tax, and if this power were irrevocably
bartered away by one legislature as to one subject of taxation, future legislatures would abandon the people’s
rights in other fields, and ultimately all sources of revenue would have been “contracted” away.

The Supreme Court took an exactly opposite view. On May 24, 1854, through Justice McLean, it declared
Ohio’s act of 1851 unconstitutional.(193) The Legislature of 1845 had been the “exclusive judge” of the
privileges to be offered to the Piqua Branch Bank as a condition of its establishment. Having made a bargain,
Ohio must stick to it.

This was a 5-4 decision, with the four Southern judges (Taney, Catron, Daniel and Campbell) warmly
dissenting. The exemptions granted to expanding corporations by the various State legislatures had become a

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growing scandal,(194) and Campbell at least was well aware of “the sly and stealthy arts to which State
Legislatures are exposed, and the greedy appetites of adventurers for monopolies and immunities from the State
right of government.”

The opinion in the Piqua Branch case, Warren comments, “produced a sensation.” Hostility to the Court, already
running high as a result of the slavery issue, reached a new pitch. Nor was this antagonism tempered by the
Court’s almost simultaneous decision, in a somewhat corollary case, involving the Ohio Life Insurance and
Trust Company. Here the facts were that the company had been incorporated in 1834; its existence had not been
conditioned upon the legislative “contract” of 1845. When the State sued to collect the higher tax under the law
of 1851, the company cited the binding nature of its original charter; this, it was urged, constituted a contract
which no legislature could impair. The Ohio Supreme Court rejected this contention, and on appeal, surprisingly
enough, the Supreme Court—through Chief Justice Taney—accepted some of the reasoning of the court below.
His opinion is cited in these notes because Taney had some things to say that are pertinent to questions in our
own time: “It will be admitted on all hands,” he remarked, “that with the exception of the powers surrendered by
the Constitution of the United States, the people of the several States are absolutely and unconditionally
sovereign within their respective territories.” In Ohio, the sovereign people had settled questions of corporate
charters in their constitution of 1802—such charters granted no exemptions from future tax levies—and in
Taney’s view the subject was closed. Let us note what he said next:

When the Constitution of a State, for nearly half a century, has received one uniform and unquestioned
construction by all the departments of the government, legislative, executive and judicial, I think it must be
regarded as the true one. . . . Certainly a construction acted on as undisputed for nearly fifty years by every
department of government, and supported by judicial decision, ought to be regarded as sufficient to give to the
instrument a fixed and definite meaning.(195)

Certainly it may be suggested that Taney’s comment is a sound guide for giving a “fixed and definite meaning”
to any constitution—that of Ohio in 1854, or that of the United States precisely a century later.

But if Ohioans thought any sort of truce with the Court had been reached in the Ohio Life case, they shortly
were disabused. Two years later, the Supreme Court cracked down again on Ohio’s “impairment of contracts” in
the matter of bank taxes. This time the Court held that even the sovereign people of Ohio themselves, by
amending their own State Constitution, could not wipe out the bank law of 1845. “Moral obligations never die,”
said the Court, and it went on to read Ohio a stiff lecture on the supremacy of the Supreme Court in its role as
final arbiter of the Constitution.(196)

Justices Campbell, Catron, and Daniel again dissented, and some of Campbell’s observations merit brief
quotation:

As to the claim made for the court to be the final arbiter of these questions of political power, I can imagine no
pretension more likely to be fatal to the constitution of the court itself. If this court is to have an office so
transcendent as to decide finally the powers of the people over persons and things within the State, a much
closer connection and a much more direct responsibility of its members to the people is a necessary condition
for the safety of popular rights.

Campbell went on to quote a comment by Justice Levi Woodbury in the politics-ridden case of Luther vs.
Borden, some seven years before. “If the people,” Woodbury had remarked, “in the distribution of powers under
the Constitution, should ever think of making judges supreme arbiters in political controversies, when not
selected by nor, frequently, amenable to them, nor at liberty to follow such various considerations in their
judgment as belong to mere political questions, they will dethrone themselves, and lose one of their own
invaluable birthrights; building up in this way—slowly, but surely—a new sovereign power in the Republic, in

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most respects irresponsible, and unchangeable for life, and one more dangerous, in theory at least, than the worst
elective oligarchy in the worst of times.”(197)

Unhappily, Campbell’s dissenting opinion was of little value to the angry people of Ohio. But for a time, the
State Supreme Court went along with the United States Supreme Court.(198) Then, in 1857, the Ohio judges
boiled over. Again they insisted that the Legislature of 1845 had “no right to abridge or extinguish the exercise
of this [taxing] power by a future legislature.” And with all deference to the Supreme Court, “we do not . . . feel
at liberty to depart from our own settled convictions.” Judge Brinkerhoff, glaring at the Piqua Branch and
Woolsey cases, remarked that the Supreme Court’s reasoning had failed to satisfy his judgment; he thought the
high Court should have an opportunity to reconsider the question.(199)

For some reason, that judgment of the Ohio court does not appear to have been appealed; and perhaps
emboldened, the Ohio State Supreme Court again in 1859 interposed its sovereign powers and once more
rejected the Supreme Court’s ruling. Speaking for the Ohio court, Judge Gholson examined the relationship of
State appellate tribunals to the U.S. Supreme Court, and had this to say: “As a practical question, as a question
of policy, acquiescence is probably the wiser and better course. But the limited and qualified character of the
appellate jurisdiction . . . does not countenance the idea . . . that Congress had in view a uniformity of decision
upon questions arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States, and that the Supreme Court was the
common arbiter for the decision of such questions.” Comity, decorum, and respect, said Judge Gholson, are to
be regarded, “but justice and right are entitled to a higher consideration.”(200)

This time the rebellious decision of the Ohio judges was appealed, and Mr. Justice Wayne slapped it down in the
brusque fashion of Father William. We have said it three times, he said for the Court, and that is enough: Your
bank act of 1851 is unconstitutional. Judgment reversed.(201)

The same question of contract impairment figured in a long running battle between the Court and a group of
Midwestern States in the matter of railway subsidies. Ordinarily, these grants to the on-reaching railways were
financed by municipalities, eager to attract the rail lines, through the issuance of municipal bonds. As often as
not, the gaudy hopes of the municipalities soon were reduced to ashes: The railroad never came, or it came ten
miles away, or something happened, and the bonds were in time repudiated. In case after case, the contention
was advanced that the bonds constituted a contract which no State or a sub-division of the State might validly
impair, and in case after case the Supreme Court upheld this contention.(202) Yet a peculiar problem was
created when the highest judiciary of a State had ruled the bonds not binding. In overruling the State courts, the
Supreme Court in effect undertook to legislate for itself; the States fought back, and in time the States won.
Iowa was a leader in this fight. When the United States Supreme Court, in Gelpcke vs. Dubuque, undertook to
prevent the Iowa State court from reversing itself on the propriety of a bond issue, Iowa rebelliously defied the
Court’s mandate.(203) When the Supreme Court insisted that State courts “are destitute of all power to restrain
either the process or proceedings in the national courts,” Iowa demonstrated that she was not destitute at
all.(204) When the Supreme Court termed the State injunctions mere “nullities,” the State courts made them
stick; and when the Court declared that neither State nor Federal tribunals “can impede or arrest any action the
other may take, within the limits of its jurisdiction,” the antagonized Midwestern States made it apparent that
they could, and would, impede such Federal mandates when they deemed the writs palpably unconstitutional
and wrong.(205) By 1888, the Supreme Court, obviously having had the worst of it, backed down.(206)

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 15
After the War
NOW, ONE of the most cherished criticisms advanced against the doctrine of State interposition is that if the
theory had any validity prior to 1865, after that it had none. “The victory of the North killed State sovereignty,”
said Chase, in ripe satisfaction.(207) “The doctrine so long contended for,” said a stern-visaged Bradley, “that
the Federal Union was a mere compact of States, and that the States, if they chose, might annul or disregard the
acts of the national Legislature, or might secede at their pleasure, and that the general government had no power
to coerce them into submission to the Constitution, should be regarded as definitely overthrown.”(208) And a
contemporary critic has commented that “the denial of the right of secession by the unanswerable argument of
superior force put an end to the claim that the American States were full-fledged and independent
sovereignties.”(209)

The unanswerable argument of superior force. . . . Is the argument in fact unanswerable? The victory of the
North. . . . In a society that rests upon a fundamental written law, is law thus made? Those who espouse the
theory that Appomattox put an end to State sovereignty—that Lee surrendered not only his army, but the Tenth
Amendment also—must accept two propositions: First, that the victorious Northern States, which dictated the
terms of the peace and dominated the Congress thereafter, were incredibly short-sighted and stupid; and second,
that our basic law rests not upon a Constitution, but upon the cannon. Actually, there is a third proposition also:
That the Supreme Court, no less than the Congress, has engaged since then in ninety years of palpable
dumbshow and nonsense.

If the fundamental nature of the United States as a Union of States truly died at Appomattox, surely so
prodigious a revolution of constitutional government would have been embedded in the Constitution by the
victors. With Lee’s surrender in the spring of 1865, the triumphant Northern States had total control of the
Constitution in their hands. This was their magnificent opportunity, won in blood on a hundred battlefields, to
consolidate their victory in a consolidated—a national—government. This was their chance to wipe out the last
vestige of the States as sovereign political entities, or at the very least, to reduce the States to mere dependent
satellites of Washington. The steps toward that end should have been clear to a child’s eye: To provide for a
President, elected by a majority of all the people, wholly removed from State lines; to establish a Congress
composed of Representatives from Federal districts according to national (not State) population; to rewrite
Article V, in order to make amendment of the Constitution a matter for the majority of the whole people; to
skim through the Constitution, changing every plural reference to the United States to the singular; to wipe out
the Tenth Amendment, and provide that all legislative and judicial powers, save only those that might be
delegated to the States and their sub-divisions, were to be exercised thereafter by the Congress. Then, in fact, a
national sovereignty would have been achieved, and the States would have been extinguished.

But what did the victors do? None of these things. Three amendments, and three only, were engrafted onto the
Constitution in the years following the War. The Thirteenth (December, 1865) put an end to slavery. The
Fourteenth (July, 1868) provided, among other things, that no State could infringe the equal protection of the
laws. The Fifteenth (March, 1870), demonstrating that the Fourteenth was not all-inclusive in the field of civil
rights, provided that there should be no racial discrimination upon the right to vote.

That was all. Not a line was changed in the provisions dealing with the Presidency or with the Congress. Not a
single timber in the fundamental structure of the basic law was removed. To be sure, the Fourteenth Amendment
contained transient references to “insurrection or rebellion,” but these subordinate provisions dealt with the
holding of public office by officials who had served in the Confederate forces, or to the validity of certain debts.
The inconsequential nature of these latter sections of the Fourteenth Amendment is attested by the fact that
Corwin’s massive annotation of the Constitution (1952) accords 207 pages to the first section of the Fourteenth,

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and seven pages only to all the rest. That the separateness of the States was not affected by the Reconstruction
amendments was further demonstrated with ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, which provided
for the popular election of “two Senators from each State.” If State sovereignty had ceased to exist, as
nationalists profess to believe, this amendment would make no sense at all: There would no longer be any such
thing, in the political sense, as a State.

The followers of Mr. Justice Chase cannot have it both ways—either sovereignty ceased to exist in the States (in
which case, the act of extinguishment must be pointed out), or sovereignty remains there still. Sovereign power
must lie somewhere. Obviously, it was not vested, after the War, in the Congress: The Congress cannot change
the Constitution. Nor was it vested in the Court, as Mr. Justice Frankfurter has recently reminded us. Neither
was the sovereign power shifted to the whole people: Article V was not touched. Marshall’s critical “power to
make and unmake” was left, after the war, just where it was before—in the hands of the States.

A society boasting of its enlightened civilization—its “democracy”—could not have it otherwise. The
alternative is a law that rests on a guncotton bed. In this theory, we must look not to Philadelphia in 1787, but to
Gettysburg in 1863. The Constitution, so conceived, has value only as wadding for a cannon ball. Armed might
succeeds written law.

That it was not the intention of the victorious North to extinguish the States as sovereign entities was
demonstrated not only by the wording of the Reconstruction amendments; it has been evidenced countless times
in holdings of State and Federal courts down through the years. Let the question be asked: Why were the States
so active in “interposing” prior to the War, and relatively so passive thereafter? The answer is perfectly plain: In
the period immediately following the war, the major trend of the Supreme Court opinions, strange as it may
seem, was in the direction of States’ rights. And when, twenty-five years after the war, this trend began to shift
toward a strengthening of the Federal government, it was generally with the people’s consent and approval.
Also, it may be submitted that the States have not been so wholly acquiescent and supine since the War as it is
popularly believed.

Let us examine the first of these responses. An objective study will disclose that, far from advancing the cause
of national supremacy, the Supreme Court of the United States, in its most significant opinions over the two
decades from 1868 to 1888 repeatedly affirmed the sovereign powers of the individual States. This twenty-year
period, extending from ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the beginning of Melville Fuller’s tenure as
Chief Justice, completed the swing of the pendulum that began with Marshall’s death in 1835 and the advent of
Taney as Chief Justice. Under Marshall, there had been a compulsive swing toward nationalism; this swung
back to the States under Taney, but under the impetus of the war swung forward again. Then, under Chase and
Waite, the pendulum once more swung in the States’ favor. About the turn of the century, in the string of
opinions that marked expansion of the commerce clause, the swing went back toward nationalism—and it has
been swinging pretty much in that direction ever since.

During this period of 1868 to 1888, seventeen judges sat on the Supreme Court. They included judges good,
bad, and indifferent —among them several whose names should not have been so thoroughly forgotten. In an
uncertain period, sometimes the Court spoke uncertainly; but over the period as a whole, in a day of emotional
exhaustion, these judges managed to restore a terribly needed vitality to the Constitution.

There was Samuel Nelson, a former Chief Justice of New York, named to the Court by Tyler in 1845, a man of
strong will though scarcely a student of constitutional law. (He wrote only twenty-two opinions for the court on
constitutional questions in his twenty-eight years on the bench.) A more colorful judge was Robert C. Grier,
whose term ran from his appointment in 1846 to his reluctant resignation in 1870; he had a “soft and rosy
nature,” the New York Tribune once remarked, but actually he had a good deal of stamina also.

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Next in line was the strong-willed and stubborn Nathan Clifford of Maine, who served on the Court from 1858
until 1881. A stout believer in States’ rights, Judge Clifford was a man of unyielding convictions: He thought
that Hayes had usurped the White House, and so thinking, refused to enter the White House while Hayes held
office. Clifford was followed to the Court, in 1862, by Noah Haynes Swayne, an obscure Ohio attorney, who
served for nearly twenty years; there is some legend that Lincoln had intended to appoint J. R. Swan, and got
mixed up, but the story is probably apocryphal.

Another of Lincoln’s appointees, only forty-six when he went on the bench, was Samuel Freeman Miller of
Iowa, who was to write the famed Slaughterhouse opinion in 1873. The same year that saw Miller named to the
Court also witnessed the appointment of Lincoln’s close personal friend, David Davis, a circuit judge in Illinois,
who left the Court in 1877 to become United States Senator from Illinois. Davis, like Miller, was built along
massive lines—it was once said of him that he had to be “surveyed” for a pair of trousers—but this corpulent
body concealed a sharp mind and a trenchant pen.

The year following Davis’s appointment saw the confirmation of Stephen J. Field of California, who surely must
rank among the more fabulous personalities identified with the Court. If his last years on the Court were pathetic
(like Grier, he had to be told to resign, but only after out-serving Marshall), his early career was impressive.

In 1864 came Taney’s long expected death—he was eighty-seven—and with it the appointment of Salmon P.
Chase of Ohio as Chief Justice. Chase, a former member of the Senate and Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury,
was a surprise appointment: He had not practiced actively for fourteen years, and generally was regarded (by
himself, among others) as an aspirant for the Presidency; but he served, on the whole, quite notably.

Grant’s two appointees of 1870—William Strong of Pennsylvania, and Joseph P. Bradley of New Jersey—are
little remembered, and justifiably so. The former served for ten years, the latter for twenty-two; both were strong
Union men, though Bradley occasionally took a narrow construction of the Fourteenth Amendment. Neither is
there much to recall of Ward Hunt of New York, named to the court in 1873. He served actively for only four
years, but then, the victim of a paralytic stroke, languished on the Court for five more years until Judge Davis,
now a member of the Senate, sponsored a special retirement bill for him.

With the death of Chase in 1873, Morrison R. Waite, white-bearded, black-browed, succeeded to the office of
Chief Justice. An Ohioan with no previous judicial experience and little reputation as a lawyer, he was hotly
assailed then and has been coolly criticized by centralist historians ever since. But it was largely Waite’s
remarkably firm hand that kept northern abolitionists from having their own way with the Fourteenth
Amendment, and in time he was to write the Court’s opinion in the Granger cases, sustaining—for a while—the
States’ police power in the field of rate-fixing on public-service corporations. Waite deserves better treatment
than Court criticism has accorded him.

Waite was followed on the Court, in 1877, by John Marshall Harlan of Kentucky. He, too, had no previous
judicial experience, but in his thirty-four years on the bench, he set a notable record. Then came William B.
Woods of Georgia, in 1880, first Southerner on the Court since Campbell in 1852, but actually a transplanted
Yankee: Like the abolitionist Stanley Matthews, whose nomination to the Court was barely confirmed in 1881,
he had served in the Union army as an officer from Ohio. Then came Horace Gray, succeeding Clifford in 1881,
long a member of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, a stern martinet of a man, six feet four inches
tall, “strict and punctilious,” a believer in strong national government.(210)

Last of the judges of 1868-88 were Samuel Blatchford of New York, who came on the bench in 1882 with
fifteen years’ experience behind him as a Federal judge specializing in maritime and patent law,(211) and the
black-bearded Mississippian with the lovely rolling name of Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar.

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These seventeen men sat on the bench in a period in which State sovereignty was supposed to have been killed
off. But was a national supremacy broadly asserted by the Court or conceded by the States? Precisely the
reverse was true.

It is notable, in this regard, that in the period of sixty-four years, from Marshall’s ruling in Marbury vs. Madison
in 1803, to the Court’s opinion in Ex Parte Garland in 1867, only four acts of Congress were held
unconstitutional.(212) But in the brief span of four years, 1870-73, no fewer than six acts of Congress were
voided. These blows at national power began with the first Legal Tender case. This arose in Kentucky in 1860,
when a Mrs. Hepburn borrowed $11,250 from one Henry Griswold. At the time the loan was made, only gold
and silver were legal tender for payment of private debts, but in 1862, Congress authorized the issuance of
$150,000,000 in United States Notes. When Mrs. Hepburn subsequently attempted to pay off her loan in the
new Treasury notes, Griswold refused to accept them and suit resulted. To the immense chagrin of President
Grant, Chase and three associates (there were two vacancies on the Court) held that Congress had no authority,
under the Constitution, to enlarge its power to coin money into a power to make paper currency legal
tender.(213) Scarcely had the Court stunned Congress on this major law before it slapped down the Congress on
a minor statute: In 1870, the Court voided an act of 1867 which oddly made it a misdemeanor (unrelated to
revenue laws) for any person to sell a combination of naphtha and illuminating oil.(214) This was swiftly
followed by a ruling in a New York case, in which the Supreme Court justices upheld New York State judges in
refusing to approve the removal of a certain case from State to Federal jurisdiction, pursuant to an act of
1863.(215)

The following year came another severe blow against national authority: Between 1864 and 1867, Congress had
adopted several laws levying an income tax.(216) In Massachusetts, a county probate judge, J. M. Day, paid his
tax under protest, and then sued for its recovery. His contention was that Congress had no power to impose a tax
upon State officials. When the case reached the Supreme Court, a solid majority of the Court agreed. Six years
after State sovereignty was said to have been extinguished at Appomattox, Judge Nelson said this for the Court:

It is a familiar rule of construction of the Constitution of the Union, that the sovereign powers vested in the State
governments by their respective constitutions remained unaltered and unimpaired, except so far as they were
granted to the government of the United States. . . . The government of the United States claims no powers
which are not granted to it by the Constitution, and the powers actually granted must be such as are expressly
given, or given by necessary implication. . . .(217)

The two governments, said the Court, are “on an equality,” and if the States could not tax Federal officials,
which had been already decided,(218) neither could the Federal government tax State officials.(219) The States,
within the limits of their reserved powers, said Nelson, “are as independent of the general government as that
government within its sphere is independent of the States.”

Just one year later, in 1872, the Court again acted summarily upon an act of Congress. A vengeful law, aimed at
confiscation of property owned by Southerners during the War, was ruled unconstitutional.(220)

Finally, completing this group of half-a-dozen blows against nationalist expansion, the Court in 1873 refused to
sanction a Federal tax that was imposed, in effect, upon the city of Baltimore. “Of all the burdens imposed upon
mankind,” said Judge Hunt, “that of grinding taxation is the most cruel.” And more than fifty years after a
Federalist Court under Marshall had chastised Maryland in a tax case, a States’ rights Court under Chase came
to Maryland’s rescue.

This is not to say, of course, that every major decision in the postwar period went in the States’ favor. Of course
not. There was, notably, a case from Wisconsin that arose when an eighteen-year-old boy, Edward Tarble,
falsified his age and his name and enlisted in the army. His father obtained a writ of habeas corpus from a State
commissioner, who directed that the youth be released. On appeal to the State Supreme Court, this judgment

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was affirmed. The recruiting officer then appealed to the United States Supreme Court, and Judge Field
delivered himself of some remarks to the very State court that twelve years earlier, in the Booth case, had defied
the Federal tribunal:

There are within the territorial limits of each State two governments, restricted in their spheres of action, but
independent of each other, and supreme within their respective spheres. Each has its separate departments; each
has its distinct laws, and each has its own tribunals for their enforcement. . . . The two governments in each State
stand in their respective spheres of action in the same independent relation to each other, except in one
particular, that they would if their authority embraced distinct territories. That particular consists in the
supremacy of the authority of the United States when any conflict arises between the two governments.(221)

Notably, Chief Justice Chase dissented from his brothers’ view. In his opinion, there was no doubt that State
courts had a right to issue writs of habeas corpus for inquiry into the jurisdiction of a Federal court over a
prisoner. And he was still more convinced, if possible, that State courts had a right to inquire, through habeas
corpus, into the detention of a citizen held merely by a Federal official, without the sentence of a court. To deny
such powers to a State court, he said, “is to deny the right to protect the citizen by habeas corpus against
arbitrary imprisonment in a large class of cases.”

But the majority’s holding in Tarble’s case was the exception in this period, not the rule. Time after time, in
major cases, States’ rights prevailed. In Thomson vs. Union Pacific, the Court upheld the right of States to tax a
railroad built with Federal funds.(222) In Osborne vs. Mobile, the Court approved a State license tax on express
companies doing business partly outside a State.(223) When a woman in Illinois contended that she had a right,
under the Fourteenth Amendment, to practice law in State courts, the Supreme Court affirmed the power of
Illinois to legislate on such matters for itself.(224) When a murderer in California was sentenced to death on
proceedings that stemmed from an information instead of an indictment, the Court held this was the exclusive
business of California.(225) Similarly, Pennsylvania was upheld in a law suppressing the manufacture of
oleomargarine;(226) Iowa and Kansas were upheld in State liquor laws,(227) and Mississippi was affirmed in a
State act creating a railroad commission.(228) Why should the States have interposed? Their high place was
repeatedly affirmed.

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 16
The Reconstruction Cases
BUT THE most significant cases in this period, of course, were those in which the Supreme Court construed the
newly imposed Reconstruction Amendments. And of these, the most vital to the cause of States’ rights was the
Court’s ruling of 1873 in the famed Slaughterhouse cases.(229) Warren has written of this decision that it
“profoundly affected the course of the future history of the country.”(230) It was “one of the glorious landmarks
of American law.”(231) The case arose when a corrupt, carpet-bag legislature of Louisiana awarded a twenty-
five-year monopoly on the operation of a slaughterhouse in New Orleans to a single company. Independent
butchers protested that a thousand men had thus been deprived of their right to engage in business; they had
been denied, in the language of the new amendment, “equal protection of the laws”; their privileges as United
States citizens had been abridged, and their property had been taken from them without due process of law.

But in April, 1873, nearly five years after the Fourteenth Amendment had been declared ratified, the Court
ringingly held that the amendment was not intended “to destroy the main features of the general system” of
constitutional government. The amendment was not designed to bring within the jurisdiction of the Court “the
entire domain of civil rights heretofore belonging to the States.” To thus enlarge the scope of the Fourteenth
Amendment would be to make the Court itself “a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the States, on the civil
rights of their own citizens, with authority to nullify such as it did not approve as consistent with these rights.”
This responsibility the Court was not prepared to accept.

The “great source of power in this country,” said Miller for the Court, lies in “the people of the States.” They
have reserved unto themselves, he said, in their respective States, broad police powers; and upon the
preservation of these powers, in State hands, “depends the security of social order” and “the enjoyment of
private and social life.” To seize these powers away from the States would be to “fetter and degrade” the State
governments, and “radically to change the whole theory of the relations of the State and Federal governments to
each other, and of both these governments to the people.”

Within a period of a few years followed five other cases in which the Supreme Court continued to uphold and
defend the rights of the States under the Reconstruction amendments. The opinions are important to us today for
the strong light they shed on what the amendments meant then, when they were freshly adopted and their
intended effect on State and Federal relationships was clear.

In the first of these, the Court voided parts of the Civil Rights Enforcement Act of 1870; the judges saw it as
their duty to “annul [the act’s] encroachments upon the reserved powers of the States and the people.”(232) In
the second, the Court took a level-headed look at the indictment of a group of white men who had been charged
with conspiring to prevent two Negroes from voting in Louisiana. The right to vote, said the Court, is a right that
comes from the State; it is not a right subject to regulation as a right of “citizens of the United States.”(233) In
United States vs. Harris, the Court threw out the first anti-lynch law to come from Congress. The so-called Ku
Klux Act of 1871 was not warranted by the Reconstruction Amendments: Congress could pass laws to inhibit
abridgments of privileges and immunities by a State, but it could not constitutionally legislate against ordinary
crimes of violence.(234) In the Civil Rights cases, decided in October of 1883, the entire Civil Rights Act of
1875 was thrown out. This act had undertaken to provide a fine of $500 to $1,000, or a jail sentence of thirty
days to one year, on any person convicted of refusing a Negro equal access to a public inn, conveyance, theater,
or other place of public amusement. The cases originated in Kansas, California, Missouri; and Tennessee. But
the rules laid down by a theater owner for his audience, or by an inn keeper for his guests, are his own personal
business, said the Court. Congress cannot validly encroach upon this reserved domain.

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Finally, attention may be directed to Barbier vs. Connolly, in 1885, in which the Court upheld a municipal
ordinance in San Francisco which prohibited laundry work at night. The ordinance was palpably directed at
Chinese laundry operators. But the Court held that in its guarantee of civil rights, the Fourteenth Amendment
aimed only at such civil rights as these—the right of all men to equal access to the courts, to enforcement of
their contracts, to equal protection of their property, and equal punishment for crime. The amendment was not
designed, said the Court,

to interfere with the power of the State, sometimes termed its “police power,” to prescribe regulations to
promote the health, peace, morals, education, and good order of the people.(235)

In refusing thus to intervene in California’s local affairs, the Court was not making new law. It was adhering to
what was, for a time at least, solidly established policy. Forty years earlier, in upholding a port inspection law
adopted by New York, the Court had assumed a position it was pleased to call “impregnable”:

That a State has the same undeniable and unlimited jurisdiction over all persons and things, within its territorial
limits, as any foreign nation, where that jurisdiction is not surrendered or restrained by the Constitution of the
United States.(236)

The internal police powers of a State, never having been surrendered or delegated, therefore could not be
restrained by Federal authority; in these fields, the authority of the State was “complete, unqualified, and
exclusive.” Taney had said the same thing, at about the same time, in the famed Charles River Bridge case: “We
cannot . . . by legal intendments and mere technical reasoning, take away from [the States] any portion of that
power over their own internal police and improvement, which is so necessary to their well-being and
prosperity.”(237)

But in time, of course, the Court was to take the power away. Taney was dead then, God rest him.

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 17
The Commerce Clause (Commenced)
THESE WELL-FOUNDED doctrines of State power were upheld for a time not only as to “civil rights” cases
growing out of the Reconstruction Amendments, but also in a wide variety of other actions in which, long after
the War, States both North and South asserted their sovereign authority. Notable among these were the Granger
cases, in which the Court approved State laws in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa fixing freight and
passenger rates on railroads and fees at grain elevators.(238) Some of Marshall’s old rules upon impairment of
contracts tumbled in cases from Massachusetts and Mississippi.(239)

But in the final decade of the nineteenth century the judicial trend that had been swinging toward the States
began to turn back toward an expansion of Federal powers. State immigration statutes toppled; sweeping new
authority was vested in Congress as to the issuance of currency and the construction of internal improvements;
in a series of opinions in the 188o’s, the Supreme Court sharply curtailed the effectiveness of the Eleventh
Amendment, by sanctioning suits against States for enforcement of obligations under bond issues.(240)

In no field, however, was this swing of the pendulum more significant than in the construction given by the
Court to the “commerce clause.” The story is too well known, perhaps, to justify very extended review, yet no
account of State and Federal conflicts, or of the growth of judicial supremacy over the States, would be
complete without some chronicle of the melancholy tale. Congress and the Court, working in beautiful harmony,
together snatched from the States and the people almost the last vestige of local control over local affairs. And
they did it under the guise of that brief clause in Article I of the Constitution, vesting Congress with power “to
regulate commerce . . . among the several States.”

It was an insidious process, conducted with the care of the cat that stalks her prey—now creeping forward, now
pausing to sniff the air; now advancing, now lying still as the bird takes alarm; then edging forward again, and
so, step by inexorable step, moving to the ultimate seizure. Probably it is too late now for the States to do much
about it. But perhaps a backward look might even yet save them from ending up like Prokofieff’s duck,
quacking feebly from inside the wolf.

In the beginning, it was thought that “commerce” meant simply the act of transporting goods. Commerce began
when the thing transported moved to a carrier for transportation.(241) The power to regulate such commerce
among the States, in this uncomplicated era, was viewed primarily as a power vested in Congress to see to it that
no hindrance was placed in the way of such transportation.

But in time, a second gateway opened up: The original doctrine grew into a concept that the clause applied not
only to transportation, but also to regulation of the thing transported. If these things had, in themselves, “some
harmful or deleterious property,” Congress could exercise its power to regulate as a power to prohibit.(242)

The second gateway gave way to a third: Congress had power to regulate not only commerce, and the
commodity in commerce, but also to regulate the conditions under which the commodity or thing were
manufactured—and the conditions under which the commodity could be bought and sold.

In recent years, even that concept has proved inadequate to the aggrandizement of centralist power. The theory
now is that should “the wells of commerce go dry,” as Hughes once observed, the Congress has broad power to
fill them up again—that is, to encourage, stimulate, and foster commerce among the States.(243) Let us trace
some of the more significant milestones on this road to nationalist power.

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As early as 1876, the Court began to modify some of the stout assertions it had made in the Miln case (1837) in
behalf of State inspection laws.(244) The brave powers given to the States in the Granger cases were abridged
within a decade after their promulgation.(245) Then, in 1890, came what one critic termed “the most crushing
blow against the rights of States which has ever been dealt by that tribunal”—the Court’s ruling that States could
not exercise their reserved powers against the importation and sale of goods in their “original package.”(246)
What this meant, in immediate application, was that prohibition States could not prevent the importation and
sale of liquor, but the doctrine opened a wide doorway for other laws to follow.

These major strides toward national authority were accompanied, to be sure, by an occasional backward step and
a bow to the States. Thus, certain aspects of mining and manufacture were held—temporarily—to be not a part
of interstate commerce.(247) In the first major case under the Sherman Act, the Court held, 5-4, that sugar
interests were not subject to the law’s restraint. The Court, indeed, was a little shocked that this should even be
suggested: “Slight reflection will show that if the national power extends to all contracts and combinations in
manufacture, agriculture, mining, and other productive industries, whose ultimate results may affect external
commerce, comparatively little of business operations and affairs would be left for State control.”(248) The
Court, as events were to prove, was to give this apprehension very “slight reflection” indeed.

Yet for a time, the eagle’s wings were clipped. Most astonishing of all the decisions in this period, unfavorable
to national authority, was the Court’s stunning decision in 1895, by which it invalidated the whole of an income
tax law adopted by the Cleveland administration.(249) Actually, it is a little unfair to say that “the Court” voided
the law: One man, Justice George Shiras, shaped the Constitution by changing his not very brilliant mind. The
result was that the century-old precedent of Hylton vs. United States (1796)(250) vanished in a twinkling, and
the shocked country won a clear view of the vagaries of judicial legislation. Justice White, dissenting, offered
the interesting argument—and it is quite pertinent to the point of this essay—that the failure of the people to
amend their Constitution in this hundred-year period, in order to overthrow the Hylton decision and prohibit an
income tax”—was practically a ratification of that policy, and an acquiescence in the settled rule of
interpretation theretofore adopted.” William Jennings Bryan noted furiously that “the income tax was not
unconstitutional when it was passed; it was not unconstitutional when it went before the Supreme Court for the
first time; it did not become unconstitutional until one judge changed his mind, and we cannot be expected to
know when a judge will change his mind.”(251) But though scores of Congressmen and jurists protested
strenuously, it took the Sixteenth Amendment to undo the opinion.

The same session of 1895 that brought invalidation of the income tax saw many a States’ Righter outraged by
the Court’s ruling in the Debs case, in which the Court approved the use of both Federal troops and Federal
injunctions to put down a major strike.(252) The months just preceding the Debs case also had seen the States
offended by opinions outlawing statutes from Texas and Maryland relating to rate regulation of railroads.(253)
These rulings were so drastic in their implications that Field protested the Court was palpably invading the
reserved authority of the States. Other observers thought so, too: The Democratic National Convention of 1896
adopted a plank denouncing this “new and highly dangerous form of oppression by which Federal judges, in
contempt of the law of the States and rights of citizens, become at once legislators, judges and executioners.” In
Oregon, Governor Sylvester Pernoyer condemned a system of government “by the plausible sophistries of John
Marshall” as a government in which “a judicial oligarchy has supplanted the Constitution.”

For the States there was worse to come. In 1896, the Court took another big step toward nationalism, when it
sanctioned Federal condemnation of the Gettysburg Battlefield for a national cemetery as a necessary and proper
action under the general welfare clause.(254)

Then a riptide of opinions began to wash away State powers. Congress helped. Following the basic Interstate
Commerce Act of 1887, the Congress had piled onto the statute books the Safety Appliance Act of 1893. Now it
added the Automatic Coupler Act of 1903, the Hours of Service Acts of 1907 and 1916, the Employers Liability
Acts of 1905 and 1908, the Hepburn Act of 1906 (which superseded all State laws limiting recovery for loss of

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goods in transportation), the Boiler Inspection Acts of 1911 and 1915, the Plant Quarantine Act of 1912, and
ultimately the Adamson Act of 1916, which undertook to fix wages and hours for railway employees.

With the single exception of the Employers Liability Act (the so-called “Yellow Dog Act”),(255) each of these
bold ventures into the “regulation of commerce” won the Court’s approval. Thus, with the Court’s blessing, the
second gateway of the commerce clause swung wide: Congress no longer found itself limited to regulating mere
transportation—it was invited to regulate the things transported. In swift succession, the Supreme Court
approved laws that banned the interstate shipment of such evils as lottery tickets,(256) impure food,(257)
narcotics,(258) prostitutes,(259) and an infinite variety of other goods held to be inherently evil—diseased
nursery stock, moths and plant lice; stolen autos, prize-fight films, and game birds taken in violation of State
law.

This deliberate widening of Federal authority was accompanied, in another field of law, by a corresponding
restriction of State powers: In a series of cases, the Supreme Court sustained suits brought against State officials
to restrain them from enforcing State laws alleged to be unconstitutional. Oregon was estopped from enforcing
an act governing the sale of land; North Carolina, Missouri, Texas, and Nebraska ran into Federal injunctions on
their railroad laws; South Carolina was snubbed on a dispensary statute; Michigan and Indiana saw their tax-
assessment statutes effectively nullified. These cases came to an angry boil in March of 1908, when the
Supreme Court upheld the punishment imposed by a Federal court upon Edward T. Young, Attorney General of
Minnesota, for his temerity in attempting to test a State rate law against a railroad.(260) The Federal Circuit
Court had ordered Young (and in effect, had ordered Minnesota) not to bring such a suit, but Young persisted
and it cost him a $100 fine. He refused to pay, and was taken in custody by a United States marshal. Then a writ
of habeas corpus, issued by the Supreme Court itself, brought the matter up for review. A majority of the Court,
through Justice Peckham, held that Minnesota’s rate law was “unconstitutional on its face,” and therefore, that
Young’s action in bringing suit was void. Justice Harlan interposed a thirty-five-page dissenting opinion, in
which he commented that the majority’s view, if long sustained, “would inaugurate a new era in the American
judicial system, and in the relations of the national and State governments.”(261) It would enable subordinate
Federal courts, said Harlan, “to supervise and control the official action of the States as if they were
‘dependencies’ or provinces,” and it would leave the States of the Union “in a condition of inferiority never
dreamed of when the Constitution was adopted or when the Eleventh Amendment was made a part of the
supreme law of the land.”

Many of the States quite agreed with Justice Harlan. The Nebraska Legislature adopted a strong resolution
demanding that Congress pass remedial legislation to curb the Court’s mandates. And Congress, in 1910,
complied.

But the Court was unmoved. In 1914, in the Shreveport case, it cracked down again on State regulation of
railroads with a decision so drastic that the Attorneys General of forty-two States intervened—futilely—against
the encroachment.(262) The Court opened the vast Pandora’s box of public power, when it authorized Federal
sale of excess electric power resulting from navigation projects.(263) It started upon the trail of Federal
regulation of natural gas.(264)

Then—gently at first, but irresistibly—Court and Congress opened still a third gateway in the Commerce
Clause: Having established the power of Congress to regulate transportation and the things transported, the
judges turned to regulation of the terms and conditions by which commodities are manufactured. It was not an
easy turning. When a test of the first Child Labor Law came along, the Court held, a little uneasily—perhaps a
little guiltily—that it had gone far enough.(265) In this case, the father of two teen-aged boys, employed in a
mill in Charlotte, N.C., brought suit to prevent enforcement of the Federal act of 1916 prohibiting child labor. A
Federal District Court held the act unconstitutional, and on appeal, the Supreme Court agreed. It was one thing,
said the Court, to prohibit interstate shipment of things that were evils in themselves—diseased plants,

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prostitutes, lottery tickets, and the like—but cotton goods were not inherently evil: The Congress had gone too
far; it had over-reached its authority. And the Court, through Justice Day, observed:

In interpreting the Constitution, it must never be forgotten that the Nation is made up of States to which are
entrusted the powers of local government. And to them and to the people, the powers not expressly delegated to
the national government are reserved. . . . The far-reaching result of upholding the act cannot be more plainly
indicated than by pointing out that if Congress can thus regulate matters entrusted to local authority by
prohibition of the movement of commodities in interstate commerce, all freedom of commerce will be at an end,
and the powers of the States over local matters may be eliminated, and thus our system of government be
practically destroyed.

Justice Holmes (joined by McKenna, Brandeis, and Clarke) filed a ringing dissent. “I should have thought,” said
he, “that if we were to introduce our own moral conceptions where in my opinion they do not belong, this was
preeminently a case for upholding the exercise of all its powers by the United States.” But the Court, Holmes
asserted, had no right to intrude its judgment upon questions of policy or morals. That was the prerogative of
Congress. And if the Congress chose to regard child labor as an evil, Holmes did not see how a Court that had
sanctioned a ban against strong drink could rule against “the product of ruined lives.”

In time, to be sure, Holmes’ views were to prevail. But in 1918, Federal prohibition of child labor was more than
a majority of the Court would accept. Yet the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921 met the Court’s
approval,(266) and the Grain Futures Act of 1922 seemed clearly within the powers of Congress.(267)

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 18
Interlude in a Speakeasy
IF THE flow of the commerce doctrine may be left in a literary bayou for a few pages, attention may be directed
abruptly toward an entirely separate issue that resulted in sharp conflict between State and Federal authority in
the period under consideration. This was, of course, the matter of national prohibition.

It is an everlasting testimony to the sincerity, the optimism, and the blind idiocy of man that no fewer than forty-
six of the forty-eight sovereign States ratified the Eighteenth Amendment as proposed, late in 1917, by the
Sixty-fifth Congress. Only Connecticut and Rhode Island kept their heads. The other States, losing theirs, agreed
that after January of 1920, “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors,” was to be
prohibited.

But scarcely had the long dark night begun before a thirsty people, suddenly appalled, began to resist the
amendment just adopted. Twenty thousand persons, spurred on by the late Mr. Mencken, paraded through the
streets of Baltimore; another ten thousand participated in a protest before the Capitol in Washington.(268)
Bootleggers and rumrunners came forward, dutifully, to perform those patriotic services for which Nature had
fitted them. In New York, an Association Against the Prohibition Amendment was chartered, with an announced
purpose “to make the Eighteenth Amendment forever inoperative.” Rhode Island made the mistake of testing the
Amendment, only to be told that no State could undertake “to defeat or thwart” its provisions.(269) Eminent
attorneys urged Connecticut to take a still bolder position— that not even forty-six ratifying States and the
Supreme Court could take from sovereign Connecticut the power reserved inalienably by her people to engage,
intrastate, in the distillation and sale of whiskey.(270) The late Owen Brewster, then Governor of Maine,
encouraged the opposition: “Centralization and usurpation have been the keynote of American government in
the decade that is just passed.”(271) So, too, did New Jersey’s Governor A. Harry Moore in his inaugural
address of 1926: “‘An indissoluble Union of indestructible States,’“ he said, quoting Chase in Texas vs. White,
“is rapidly becoming an indissoluble Union of impotent States. . . . Let ‘restoration of States’ rights’ be our
watch-word.”(272)

The amendment had given Congress and the States concurrent power to enforce prohibition. New York in 1923
exercised her sovereign powers by a form of nullification in reverse: New York repealed her State prohibition
enforcement act, and blandly left Federal authorities to carry on as best they could. The United States Attorney
for the Southern District of New York termed this unkind action “the hardest blow the enforcement of the
Eighteenth Amendment has received.” And so uninterested was New York in enforcing the plain language of
the United States Constitution, that speakeasies multiplied as assiduously as rabbits. By 1929, Manhattan police
matter-of-factly reported they had counted 32,000 speakeasies, but “might have missed a few.”

Throughout this period, as Alfred E. Smith was to remark later, the citizens who continued to fight prohibition
were “referred to as Nullificationists, as enemies of the Constitution, as people that wanted to destroy organized
and properly constituted government.” But in actual fact, in the view of Senator Herbert Lehman, who was then
Governor of New York, these foes of prohibition were in reality “devoted and patriotic men and women [who
carried on a fifteen-year struggle] against sumptuary legislation which at no time represented the uncontrolled
sentiment of a majority of the people of this country.” The amendment’s ultimate repeal in 1933, said Mr.
Lehman, showed “the force of intelligent, well-considered public opinion, aroused by the abuses and failures of
a statute that never commended itself to the reasoned judgment of the people.” Repeal, to Mr. Lehman,
represented victory in a fight “to regain that balance between State and Nation which is guaranteed by the
Constitution of the United States, and to substitute temperance for hypocritical and unenforceable prohibition.”

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Noting Mr. Lehman’s words, Virginia’s Senator A. Willis Robertson, summed up the point here sought to be
made: “Will the gentleman not recognize that the decree demanding that instead of providing separate but equal
schools for the races, the Southern States must mix them all together, is in our eyes ‘sumptuary’ legislation of
the worst sort, and that such action does not commend itself to the reasoned judgment of the people in our
States?”

And it may also be suggested that some of the South’s critics, now most articulate in denouncing resistance to a
ruling of the Court, were themselves most active thirty years ago in vigorously resisting not merely the Court’s
interpretation of the Constitution, but the Constitution itself. In their eyes, then, national prohibition was an
unwarranted and wrongful encroachment upon individual liberties. It is perhaps needless to pursue the parallel.

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 19
The Commerce Clause (Continued)
DURING the 1920’s, the Supreme Court under Taft moved first forward, now slightly to the rear, and then
forward again, in sanctioning gradual enlargement of the powers of Congress under the commerce clause. But it
was not until about the time that Taft died, in 1930, and Hughes returned to the Court as Chief Justice, that the
death struggle began between the State and Federal authority.

For a few years, the tide of battle flowed to the States. The first major test of Roosevelt’s depression measures
came with the National Industrial Recovery Act of June, 1933, which set up some seven-hundred codes of fair
competition by which hours, wages, customer relations, and collective bargaining would become subject to
Federal control. Under one of these codes—the Live Poultry Code for New York City—a small slaughterhouse
in Brooklyn fell into the hands of Federal authority. Its sin, among others, was that the Messrs. Schechter had
sold “an unfit chicken” to a customer.

Hughes himself spoke for a unanimous Court. True enough, he said, times were desperately bad—but
“extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power.”(273) In the Court’s view, the act went
far beyond the limits set down by the Tenth Amendment; the act not only usurped a power not delegated to
Congress—it also undertook to delegate that power to private hands. It was “delegation running riot,” as
Cardozo remarked in a concurring opinion.(274) Plainly, in the Court’s view, the power to regulate commerce
extended only to actions that affected the current of commerce; and in the case of Schechter’s chickens, in
Brooklyn, “the flow in interstate commerce had ceased.” Hughes went on to cite what he called “the necessary
and well-established distinction between direct and indirect effects” on interstate commerce; and where an effect
is “merely indirect,” such transactions “remain within the domain of State power.” If this were not so, he said
reflectively, “the Federal authority would embrace practically all the activities of the people, and the authority of
the State over its domestic concerns would exist only by sufferance of the Federal government.” So saying, the
Court gazed upon Mr. Schechter’s chickens and slew the Blue Eagle. It was a memorable decision.

Shortly thereafter came a second major test of the New Deal program. In 1933, Congress had passed the
Agricultural Adjustment Act, which undertook, among other things, to levy a tax upon cotton processing for the
benefit of cotton farmers who would plow under their surplus crops. When the receivers for the Hoosac Mills
declined to pay the tax, and contested the act’s constitutionality, the Supreme Court in 1936 held the law
void.(275) The act, said Roberts for the Court, was no more than an attempt to take money from processors and
bestow it upon the farmers; it was an attempt to regulate production, “a matter beyond the powers delegated to
the Federal government,” and hence in violation of the Tenth Amendment. To accept Mr. Roosevelt’s
construction, said the Court, would require that “every provision and every fair implication from [the
Constitution] . . . be subverted, the independence of the individual States obliterated, and the United States
converted into a central government exercising uncontrolled police power in every State of the Union,
superseding all local control or regulation of the affairs or concerns of the States.”(276)

It was brave language. But perhaps the States were so pleased by the outcome of the case that they failed to
penetrate some dicta that Roberts put forth, foggily but firmly, on the matter of the “general welfare” clause. It
was the government’s position that the AAA was justified by the power vested in Congress “to lay and collect
taxes, . . . to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” What
about this clause? Roberts remarked, with a great gentleness, that students of the Constitution for many years
had disagreed about the meaning of the welfare clause. Madison had asserted that the clause added nothing—it
referred only to the enumerated powers of Congress, and the power to tax did not extend beyond these.
Hamilton, on the other hand, had maintained that the general welfare clause conferred a power separate and
distinct from the enumerated powers—that Congress was limited in its power to tax and spend only by what

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Congress deemed to be the general welfare. Justice Story, observed Roberts, had espoused the Hamiltonian
position in his Commentaries, but until now, the view had not been “authoritatively accepted” by the Court.
Taking a breath, he continued in a fateful paragraph:

We shall not review the writings of public men and commentators or discuss the legislative practice. Study of all
these leads us to conclude that the reading advocated by Justice Story is the correct one. While, therefore, the
power to tax is not unlimited, its confines are set in the clause which confers it, and not in those of Section 8
which bestow and define the legislative powers of the Congress. It results that the power of Congress to
authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative
power found in the Constitution.(277)

Roberts interjected a few tactful qualifiers: The power invoked by Congress must be truly for the general
welfare—that is, the national welfare—and could not affect merely local matters. It could not be exercised, he
added in a horrified afterthought, “for the destruction of local self-government in the States.” Not even Hamilton
had suggested that, nor had Story ever countenanced the thought. After all, “it hardly seems necessary to
reiterate that ours is a dual form of government,” in which the Federal government may exercise only such
powers as are expressly conferred upon it.

The qualifiers are forgotten now. In the moment Roberts’ opinion came down, constitutional limitations
dissolved into the shapeless mass of a sand castle on a beach, slapped by a passing roll of foam.

But just as a tide stays at its peak for a brief hour, so the Court was to hand down one more decision that limited,
for a few years, the expanding Federal authority. In 1935, Congress had passed the Bituminous Coal
Conservation Act, in which regulation was attempted of the wages and hours of miners, and the price of soft
coal. In Carter vs. Carter Coal Company, on May 18, 1936, the Court in a 5-4 decision applied its Schechter
doctrine in reverse: Coal at the mine had not yet entered the current of commerce; it was still at rest. Speaking
for the majority, Sutherland agreed that the aims of protecting the health of miners and the comfort of the people
doubtless were “objects of great worth.” But he asked himself, “are they an end, the attainment of which has
been committed by the Constitution to the Federal government?” He could not agree that they were. Once more,
valiant to the end, the Court majority called attention to “the ruling and firmly established principle” that the
powers which the general government may exercise are only those specifically enumerated in the Constitution,
and such implied powers as are necessary and proper to carry into effect the enumerated powers.(278)

And Sutherland went on, arguing publicly with the dictum Roberts had laid down just a few months before,
dealing with the welfare clause.

The proposition, often advanced and as often discredited, that the power of the Federal government inherently
extends to purposes affecting the Nation as a whole with which the States severally cannot deal or cannot
adequately deal, and the related notion that Congress, entirely apart from those powers delegated by the
Constitution, may enact laws to promote the general welfare, have never been accepted but always definitely
rejected by this court.

In plain truth, this very “notion” had been embraced by Roberts in the AAA case, and the reign of Sutherland’s
“ruling principle” of the Tenth Amendment was fast ending. Sutherland could add only a valedictory, and he
was done: “The States were before the Constitution,” he said defiantly. Their legislative powers “antedated the
Constitution.” In all the powers they had reserved to themselves, “they are supreme.”

Every journey to a forbidden end begins with the first step; and the danger of such a step by the Federal
government in the direction of taking over the powers of the States is that the end of the journey may find the
States so despoiled of their powers, or—what may amount to the same thing—so relieved of their

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responsibilities which possession of the powers necessarily enjoins, as to reduce them to little more than
geographical subdivisions of the national domain.(279)

That was the last of the 5-4 rulings by the conservative majority among the nine old men. “This decision was the
high-water mark,” Roberts later remarked.(280) Thereafter the tide ebbed. The Carter decision came down in
May of 1936. In February of 1937, Mr. Roosevelt brought forth his court-packing scheme. He proposed that any
judge who had reached the age of seventy, and had served ten years on the court, be retired on full pay—but if
any judge failed or refused to retire, a new judge should be appointed, up to a total court of fifteen. It was an
invitation to six of the nine judges—all but Roberts, Stone, and Cardozo—to get off the bench. Barely three
months elapsed before the Court reached another landmark decision, this time in a series of cases upholding the
National Labor Relations Act of 1935. But the Court that had stood 5-4 for States’ rights in May of 1936, stood
5-4 for Federal authority in April of 1937. Now the Court jettisoned the doctrines of the Carter case. “How can
it be maintained,” asked Hughes, waggling an indignant beard, “that industrial labor relations constitute a
forbidden field that Congress may not enter?” To be sure, the authority of the Federal government “may not be
pushed to such an extreme as to destroy the distinction . . . between commerce ‘among the several States’ and
the internal concerns of a State,” for the distinction between things national and things local “is vital to the
maintenance of our Federal system.” But labor relations within a steel company—or within a clothing company
or a trailer manufacturing company—did “affect commerce.” Labor strife could in fact impose a burden that
might obstruct commerce. Hughes did not propose that the Court “shut our eyes to the plainest facts of our
national life, and . . . deal with the question of direct and indirect effects in an intellectual vacuum.”(281)

McReynolds put in a despairing dissent. Van Devanter, Sutherland, and Butler joined him. The majority’s
doctrine was subversive of States’ rights. It would mean “serious impairment of the very foundations of our
federated system.” But the Court was shifting its direction. One month later, on May 24, the Court through
Cardozo took the greatest step yet toward expansion of Federal powers in approval of the Social Security Act of
1935, The tax thus imposed, said the majority, was imposed for the general welfare—and the general welfare
was for Congress to define without the Court’s intervention.

Again McReynolds raised his voice: What was it that Chase had said in Texas vs. White in 1869? “The
Constitution looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.” But what was the effect of the
majority’s opinion? It “opens the way for practical annihilation of this theory, and no cloud of words or
ostentatious parade of irrelevant statistics should be permitted to obscure that fact.”(282) Sutherland and Van
Devanter also dissented: The majority’s ruling would deny to the States “that supremacy and freedom from
external interference in respect to [their] affairs which the Constitution contemplates.” If the Union were to
survive “as the United States, the balance between the powers of the nation and those of the States must be
maintained.” And prophetically, they remarked:

There is grave danger in permitting it to dip in either direction, danger—if there were no other—in the precedent
thereby set for further departures from the equipoise. The threat implicit in the present encroachment upon the
administrative functions of the State is that greater encroachments and encroachments upon other functions will
follow.(283)

By this time the tide was running out fast. When the Fair Labor Standards Act came along in 1938, the third
gateway of the commerce clause swung to its widest point. Here the court asserted for the Federal government
the widest possible control of wages and hours, overtime, working conditions, and the like. In United States vs.
Darby, Stone traced at some length, as if to justify his conscience and the Court’s, the growth of the commerce
doctrine. The judges were unanimous: The Tenth Amendment was but a “truism.”(284) Any process or
occupation necessary or related to the current of interstate commerce henceforth was subject to congressional
control. “The motive and purpose of a regulation of interstate commerce are matters for the legislative judgment
upon the exercise of which the Constitution places no restriction, and over which the courts are given no
control.” “The effect of sustaining the act,” Roberis observed in his lectures at Harvard in 1951, “was to place

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the whole matter of wages and hours of persons employed throughout the United States, with slight exceptions,
under a single Federal regulatory scheme and in this way completely to supersede State exercise of the police
power in this field.”(285)

The rest of the tale is quickly told. The year following the Darby case saw the court approve the Agricultural
Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, by which the farmers were delivered into Federal custody: Congress, it was
ruled, plainly had authority to fix a minimum price on milk in Chicago, for “the commerce power is not
confined in its exercise to the regulation of commerce among the States—it extends to those activities intrastate
which so affect interstate commerce, or the exertion of the power of Congress over it, as to make regulation of
them appropriate means to the attainment of a legitimate end.” And the Court happily cited John Marshall in
McCulloch vs. Maryland to prove it.(286) Almost immediately thereafter, the Court gave its benediction to the
Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. This extended Federal controls even to wheat or corn consumed on a
farm. The judges saw nothing wrong in this: “It can hardly be denied that a factor of such volume and variability
as home-consumed wheat would have a substantial influence on price and market conditions.” After all, “the
stimulation of commerce is a use of the regulating function.”(287) That was the fourth doorway opening there:
The stimulation of commerce. No great powers of prophecy are required to foresee that in this fourth gateway,
new vistas appear of Federal projects under the commerce clause.

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THE SOVEREIGN STATES
Notes of a Citizen of Virginia
by James Jackson Kilpatrick

Part 4
The States Today
1. The Southern States
2. Some Notes on the Fourteenth Amendment
3. Some Notes on Police Power
4. The Transcendent Issue

The Constitution looks to

an indestructible Union,
composed of indestructible
States.

—SALMON P. CHASE
Texas vs. White

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 1
The Southern States
ON MAY 17, 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its opinion in Brown vs. Board of
Education.(1) By this pronouncement, the Court undertook to put an end to racial separation in public schools.

“We conclude,” said Mr. Chief Justice Warren, “that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but
equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs
and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation
complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

This conclusion of the Court, this holding, had no basis in law; it had none in history. It was based primarily
upon what the Court was pleased to term “intangible considerations.” To separate Negro children from white
children, said the Court, “generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect
their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” Whatever may have been “the extent of
psychological knowledge” in 1896, when the Court approved the “separate but equal” doctrine, it now was clear
to the Court that racial separation creates a “sense of inferiority [which] affects the motivation of a child to
learn.” Citing The American Dilemma, by Gunnar Myrdal, as a general authority for its sociological views, the
Court turned smoothly to the task of formulating an appropriate decree.

It is plain, now, that the opinion should have been foreseen. There had been rumblings of judicial thunder in
preceding years: the Gaines case,(2) the McLaurin case,(3) the Sweatt case.(4) But all these had involved
segregation in institutions of higher learning, and none of them had quite turned on the fundamental question: Is
segregation in itself, as a State policy in public institutions, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment? This
question had been pondered by a few lawyers, a few editors, a few educators. The people themselves, for the
most part, had pondered the matter scarcely at all. The earlier admission of a few Negro college students in
Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas was something that had happened to some other fellow in some other place, a
long way away. It seemed inconceivable that anything drastic could happen to the neighborhood elementary
school or the village high school.

Thus the Court’s opinion, that Monday afternoon in May, struck with a stunning shock. At first the reaction was
largely one of bewilderment and dismay. Accustomed to obedient acceptance of anything purporting to be law,
most Southern spokesmen fumbled to express both opposition and acceptance. There was relief that immediate
integration had not been ordered; there was a widespread hope that “something would turn up.” Gradually this
Micawberish sentiment faded. In its place came resentment, resistance, and at last a grim comprehension of the
violence that had been done to the Constitution.

It is this last aspect to which this essay now turns. It is important to understand the constitutional position taken
by Southern States in the school case, not only for an appreciation of the great and complex problems that have
arisen in the South, but more importantly for what we may learn of the prospect that lies ahead for all States.
The opinion of May 17, 1954, it is said, affected the eight States of the Old South and the Deep South most of
all. The more accurate statement is that it affected every State equally. For the extinction of one power exercised
by a few States creates precedent for the extinction of all powers exercised by all States. Judicial encroachment,
like any vice, is habit-forming. And a series of opinions since Brown vs. Board of Education offers graphic
warning of the swift deterioration of the Constitution now in progress. “Where law ends,” Pitt said, “tyranny
begins.” Neatly bound in recent volumes of the United States Reports, it is submitted, is precisely such an
ending and beginning.

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In presenting their case, States of the South appear before their sister States neither as prisoners at the bar nor as
petitioners seeking favors. They stand as members of a Union of States. And if a parliamentary analogy may be
drawn, they take the floor as fully-qualified members of this federation, appealing a ruling of the chair. The
motion they make holds nothing of pride or of defiance either. What they charge is that the chair—the high
Court—has gravely erred; the Court in the school cases of May 17, 1954, has taken an action it was not qualified
to take; and the Southern States ask of the membership as a whole: If the Court’s decision be the wish of the
States, then the States themselves must so ordain. Not otherwise may the decision validly be imposed upon us.

It ought not to be necessary to preface these observations with a recollection of common burdens shared, and
blood spilled equally on foreign soil. Yet so passionate is the animosity now voiced against the South that
perhaps a gentle reminder may not be amiss. These States, these Southern States, yield to no States in their
devotion to those ideals of liberty and law that are our common glory. Sons of the South have fought and died,
equally with men of the North, that this heritage might be preserved. These States have shared equally in the
payment of taxes, and in the acceptance of the obligations placed upon all members of the Union. In the
immediate matter of their public schools, they have for nearly ninety years worked toward full compliance with
the law as the law repeatedly was defined and understood; by this law, believing in the stability of law, they
erected their institutions and poured their wealth and affections into them. Their sole request is that, if the law
must now be changed, then let it be by lawful process, not by lawless usurpation.

That is not so complicated a position. It asks of the member States of the Union only that they read the
Constitution and lay the South’s case beside it. Here is no threat to dissolve the Union: Here is rather a plea that
the Union be sustained for what it is and always was meant to be, a Union of separate sovereign States. Neither
does the South’s position imply destruction of the Constitution: On the contrary, the despairing cry is that the
Constitution be preserved, sacred now and hereafter, the supreme law of the land, not to be corrupted by men,
but to be amended, if need be, by States.

Now, the case for the South cannot be set down, complete, in any book or essay: It has to be lived and sensed
and felt; it is an amalgam of the smiles, hopes, fears of the Southerner’s life, a mosaic of countless fleeting
impressions and experiences. The South, it has been wisely said, is a state of mind; but this is to say no more
than that the essential South is a metaphysical abstraction, beyond the pathologists of the New York Times,
certainly beyond the Gunnar Myrdals of a distant Sweden. Its most vital tissues elude a statistician’s X-ray.
Thus it is not suggested that what follows is “the” case for the South; there is no more a single case for the South
than there is a single South—the evidence varies in kind and in degree. Yet certain contentions are shared in
common by the protesting States, and it is to these arguments, both on the law and on the merits, that attention is
now directed.

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 2
Some Notes on the Fourteenth Amendment
THE FIRST proposition is this: The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, never having been validly
ratified, cannot provide a valid basis for the mandate the Supreme Court proposes to inflict upon the Southern
States. Is this a preposterous contention? It must seem so at first, yet few historians would term it so. Is it too
late now to correct an initial wrong? Surely the South’s adversaries cannot concede that age must be respected.
Is the proposition something conjured upon on the spur of a desperate moment? Not so: The Supreme Court
repeatedly was asked to rule on the point in the Reconstruction period, and the Court as repeatedly ducked the
issue; the Court has not faced it squarely to this day. Lawyers, jurists, and scholars repeatedly have discussed the
point.(5)

The facts are not obscure. The War ended with Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865. Two months earlier, the
Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, had been approved by the Congress; it was even then making the
rounds of the States for ratification. In due course, the resolution came before the legislatures of the defeated
Southern States; they ratified it, and their ratifications were duly recorded in a count of the three-fourths
necessary to engraft it upon the Constitution. Thus, in the summer of ’65, the Confederate States formally and
officially were counted back in the Union—indeed, it was the North’s position that legally they had never left it:
Mortal men might rebel; whole States could not secede. That was the North’s contention, and not by law, but by
the force of superior arms, the North made it stick.

Yet the following December of 1865, when the Thirty-ninth Congress convened, it appeared that ten Southern
States were not States after all. Their Senators and Representatives were denied seats in the Congress. As
justification, Thaddeus Stevens advanced the argument that under the Constitution, “each House shall be the
judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members.”(6) No Southerner, in Stevens’ view, was
“qualified”; therefore, all were rejected. This summary action did palpable violence to two other provisions of
the Constitution, each explicit in its language—that no State may be deprived of its equal vote in the Senate
without its consent, and that every State shall have at least one Representative in the House. Had the Southern
States been represented, the amendment surely would have failed of approval in the Congress: It barely won a
two-thirds majority in the Senate—33-11—even with the South excluded.

Yet if the Southern States were not officially States for purposes of proposing the amendment, it appeared at
first they would be counted as States for purposes of ratification. In June of 1866, the amendment went forth to
the thirty-seven States to be considered. In the South, the amendment came before the very legislatures that so
recently had been counted in ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. They promptly rejected it. The three
border States of Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland also refused to ratify; California took no action. The result
was that the requisite twenty-eight States required for ratification could not be found.

Stevens was not dissuaded. In his view, “the conquered rebels were at the mercy of the conquerors.”(7) Thus, if
the Southern States would not ratify the amendment voluntarily, they would be compelled to ratify as the price
of readmission to the Congress. In March of 1867, the Radicals wrote into law (over Johnson’s veto) the
Reconstruction Act, which opened with a recital that “no legal State government” existed in the Southern States,
and continued with provisions for government by military rule. Federal registrars were put in charge of voting
lists, and puppet legislatures were set up throughout the South. In time, these paper parliaments duly said “ja”—
there was nothing else they could say—and their “consent” was solemnly recorded in Washington. Meanwhile,
Ohio and New Jersey, while the amendment was still pending and before a sufficient number of ratifications had
been obtained, adopted resolutions rescinding their earlier resolutions of approval. In Oregon, as Joseph B.
James has pointed out, a favorable vote of 25-22 in one house included the ayes of two men illegally elected;
when they were replaced, and a count of 24-23 against the amendment resulted, a rescinding resolution was

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declared too late to be effective. It was Oregon’s Legislature that voiced the first formal protest, perhaps, against
the invalidity of counting coerced ratifications from the Southern States.

Efforts were made, of course, to challenge this ruthless process of writing fundamental law. Had not President
Johnson himself described the Reconstruction Act as a “bill of attainder”? Yet the high Court weakly evaded
every opportunity to come to grips with the question. The issue, said the Court, was political, not justiciable.(8)
And again, in the famed McCardle case, the Court permitted Congress to amend the Reconstruction Act, in the
very middle of a judicial proceeding, in order to prevent a determination of the law’s constitutionality.(9) The
following year, in July of 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment was proclaimed “adopted.” In the bitterness of
defeat, the South offered no further contest. And though in recent years, the Court has again indicated that it
would not look into “the political departments of the government,”(10) the fact still remains that it was only by
virtue of a palpably unconstitutional series of actions that the Fourteenth Amendment ever was ratified at all.
The amendment certainly was not ratified by the voluntary act of free men under a republican form of
government. This was puppet-law, sanctioned by States, as Professor Joseph B. James has said, that “were
States in name only.” And nothing could be clearer than the line of reasoning which holds that if the amendment
were void at the outset, it remains void to this day, whether one thousand or ten thousand cases have been
decided pursuant to its terms.

This objection on the South’s part, to be sure, is not pressed with great earnestness. Freely elected legislatures,
since Reconstruction days, have tacitly acquiesced in the amendment’s existence. It is doubtless futile to revive
now the denunciation voiced then: Too much water has poured over the damn.

The objection the South relies most firmly on is this: (1) Under the Tenth Amendment, all powers not delegated
to the United States nor prohibited by the Constitution to the States are reserved to the States respectively or to
the people; (2) the power to operate racially separate schools never was prohibited to the States by the
Fourteenth Amendment or by any other provision of the Constitution, but on the contrary was clearly
understood to be reserved to them; (3) therefore, that power remains vested in the States respectively to this day,
and can be prohibited to them only by the Constitution itself, and not by any judicial construction.

South Carolina put it this way, in her resolution of February 14, 1956:

The right of each of the States to maintain at its own expense racially separate public schools for the children of
its citizens and other racially separate public facilities is not forbidden or limited by the language or intent of the
Fourteenth Amendment.

Virginia, in her resolution of Interposition (February 1, 1956) declared this:

That the State of Virginia did not agree, in ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment, nor did other States ratifying
the Fourteenth Amendment agree, that the power to operate racially separate schools was to be prohibited to
them thereby. . . .

These are not frivolous contentions. They go to the heart of our Constitutional process. Implicitly, they raise this
question: Is it right—morally or constitutionally right—for the States solemnly and honorably to agree to
Proposition “A”, only to have Proposition “Not-A” put upon them by judicial fiat? Is there any boundary at
which “interpretation” stops, and effective amendment begins? Surely there must be some such boundary, or the
amendatory process becomes mere dumbshow, and the act of ratification the gauziest stage-setting. Article V of
the Constitution must have some meaning, and its plain meaning is no more than this: That amendments
proposed to the Constitution cannot become a part of the Constitution unless they are acceptable to not fewer
than three-fourths of the States. But when it is said that an amendment must be acceptable, what is meant is that
the meaning and intention of the amendment must be acceptable; the end sought must be acceptable; the object
to be served by the amendment must be an object acceptable to three-fourths of the States. If in time, it is

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proposed that different intentions, ends, and objects be engrafted upon the Constitution, then it is clearly
reasonable to urge that these new aims must also be acceptable to three-fourths of the States.

If Constitutional government is to be preserved, if government is to be one of laws instead of men, these new
aims must be spelled out in words of plain meaning. Ponder the definition of Constitutionalism set forth—not by
a Southern legislator during the heated summer of 1956—but by a Yale University professor two decades ago:

Constitutionalism is the name given to the trust which men repose in the power of words engrossed on
parchment to keep a government in order. The writing down of fundamental law, beyond peradventure and
against misunderstanding, is an important political invention. It offers exact and enduring language as a test for
official conduct. . . .(11)

Unless the exercise of a power by government is authorized by words engrossed on parchment, and unless those
words are exact and enduring, the test for official conduct vanishes—and along with it the trust of men, upon
which in the long run government itself depends.

With that in mind, let us examine the meaning, the object, the intention, and the end sought to be served by the
Fourteenth Amendment at the time of its ratification. Was it intended that the Fourteenth Amendment, in itself,
should prohibit the States from maintaining racially separate public institutions? What, in terms of public
schools, was meant by “the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States” and “the equal protection
of the laws”?

The questions can be answered; they can be answered clearly and decisively. It should be remembered that
1868, after all, was not so terribly long ago. Records of the period are conveniently available. No vital evidence
is lost or missing. No reason exists for uncertainty.

And what the evidence shows is this: Neither the Congress that proposed the Fourteenth Amendment, nor a
single one of the thirty-seven States that considered it, understood that the amendment, of and by itself, outlawed
segregation by race in the public schools.

Three amendments were added to the Constitution in the five years that followed Appomattox. The first of
these, the Thirteenth Amendment, became effective in December, 1865; it put an end to slavery. The last of
these, the Fifteenth, became effective in March of 1870; it declared that the right to vote could not be abridged
by reason of race or previous servitude. In between these came the Fourteenth, proposed in June of 1866,
declared ratified in July of 1868.

The Fourteenth Amendment grew out of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and gave constitutional sanction to that
law. An important point to keep in mind, in considering the Civil Rights Act, is that the act was to apply to all
States; its provisions were not to affect, as was true of the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, only the States that had
seceded. Thus when the Civil Rights Bill, as introduced by Senator Trumbull of Illinois, undertook to lay down
a sweeping commandment that

There shall be no discrimination in the civil rights or immunities among the inhabitants of any State . . . on
account of race, color, or previous condition of slavery [emphasis supplied]

the meaning of “civil rights or immunities” became a matter of immediate concern to spokesmen of Northern
States. Trumbull attempted to allay these apprehensions:

The first section of the bill defines what I understand to be civil rights: The right to make and enforce contracts,
to sue and be sued, and to give evidence, to inherit, purchase, sell, lease, hold and convey real and personal
property.(12)

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Others were doubtful. Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania, a Republican, feared this “monstrous” bill(13)
might mean the end of segregated schools in his State. Others thought it might ban miscegenation laws. But
Senator Trumbull repeated that the bill dealt with civil rights only, as he had defined them, and had “nothing to
do with the political rights or status of parties.”(14)

On the House side, in March of 1866, the Trumbull bill encountered further objections. What was meant by the
provision guaranteeing to all inhabitants “full and equal benefit of all laws”? How could “civil rights or
immunities” be defined? Wilson of Iowa, chairman of the Judiciary Committee to which the bill had been
committed, had a clear and precise response:

What do these terms mean? Do they mean that in all things civil, social, political, all citizens, without distinction
of race or color, shall be equal? By no means can they be so construed. . . . Nor do they mean that . . . their
children shall attend the same schools. These are not civil rights or immunities.(15) [Emphasis supplied.]

But in view of the objections, going chiefly to the doubtful constitutionality of the bill as an encroachment upon
reserved powers of the States, the Civil Rights Bill went back to committee. On March 13, it emerged with the
reference to “civil rights or immunities” eliminated as such, but with the meaning of the bill pinned down:

Citizens of every race and color, without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude . . .
shall have the same right to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit,
purchase, lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property and to full and equal benefit of all laws and
proceedings tor the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens. . . .

In this form the bill passed. It was vetoed by President Johnson on the constitutional objection that Congress
was attempting to invade the vast field of State jurisdiction covered by the reserved powers, but in April it was
adopted over his veto. What may be learned from this brief chronology is, first, that the patrons of the act did not
intend “civil rights” to have any application to segregated schools; and secondly, that the Congress as a whole
was unwilling that there should be misunderstanding on the point. The phrase, “full and equal benefit of all
laws,” to the men most intimately concerned in the long debate, had no application to segregated schools.

Now, the resolution that led to the Fourteenth Amendment was simultaneously before the 39th Congress. It was
the work of a committee of six Senators and nine Representatives, headed by Thaddeus Stevens of
Pennsylvania. The version they proposed went to a Committee on Reconstruction, which on February 10, 1866,
sent to the floor a proposed amendment as follows:

The Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens of
each State all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and to all persons in the several States
equal protection in the rights of life, liberty and property.(16)

At once the question arose that concerns us in this review: Rogers of New Jersey thought the language might
authorize Congressional power to compel amalgamated schools. Proponents swiftly moved to quiet this
objection: The aim, they said, was not to confer any new power upon Congress, but only to permit Congress to
enforce the provisions of the Constitution already in existence. The “privileges and immunities” covered in the
proposed amendment were only those of Article IV, Section 2. (The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.) But his version of the Amendment was sidetracked,
and it was not until April 21 that a new proposal, much closer to the final form of the Amendment, came to the
floor of the Senate.

On April 25, the key sentence was written into Section 1 of the proposed amendment, exactly as it appears
today:

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No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

It is significant that in neither the majority nor minority reports accompanying this draft of the amendment was
there the slightest reference to public schools. Can it be argued persuasively that this omission is because
“everyone understood” the language would prohibit the States from operating separate schools? Plainly not. For
this very question had been raised in debate on the Civil Rights Act, and the intention of the sponsoring
members of Congress had been spelled out. It was Stevens’ aim to nail into the Constitution what was attempted
to be secured by the Civil Rights Act: A mere law could be repealed by a majority of Congress; an amendment
to the Constitution was something else. Others joined Stevens in this point of view. Boyer of Pennsylvania, who
opposed the whole resolution, thought “the first section embodies the principles of the civil rights bill.”(17)
Broomall, who favored it, agreed: The pending measure already had been considered “in another shape, in the
civil rights bill.” Senator Raymond, publisher of the New York Times, saw the amendment as embracing the
same matter of the Civil Rights Bill. Eliot of Massachusetts concurred. So did Rogers of New Jersey, who
opposed the measure: It was “no more nor less than an attempt to embody in the Constitution of the United
States that outrageous and miserable civil rights bill.”

From all of this—and the available evidence is, of course, far more voluminous—it is evident that the House of
Representatives regarded the proposed Fourteenth Amendment as a constitutional restatement and validation of
the Civil Rights Act simultaneously under debate. And it is clear that the House understood that neither the act
nor the proposed amendment related to segregated schools.

The story was repeated in the Senate debate. In all the prolonged argument over the effect of the proposed
resolution on the States, it never once was suggested by a proponent that the amendment was intended to outlaw
racially separate schools. The whole history of the amendment, as Professor James has made abundantly clear in
his meticulous monograph, rested (1) in political considerations of Negro suffrage, and (2) in a possibly humane
desire to accord certain “civil rights” to the recently freed Negro. On the first point, many of the Midwestern and
Northern States shared a concern almost equal to that which might be felt in the South: Ohio at the time denied
the vote to Negroes; so did Indiana (indeed, Indiana by her Constitution, explicitly forbade Negroes to
immigrate to or settle in that State). More importantly, it was recognized that if the vote were given with a free
hand to the former Negro slaves, on a straight population basis, the just-defeated South would gain enormously
in congressional representation. Thus, what was to become the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment for
a long period of time received far greater consideration than was given to the first section. In the eyes of
Thaddeus Stevens, this was “the most important in the article.”(18)

The debates during the first half of 1866, in terms of “equal protection” and “privileges and immunities,”
scarcely can be misunderstood. Henry Ward Beecher, the abolitionist, had no doubts on this score: The aim was
to protect the Negro’s right to work, and further to make him “the equal of all other men before the courts and in
the eyes of the law. He should be just as much qualified to be a witness as the man who assaults him.”(19) Nor
did Justin Morrill of Vermont, who was to be a member of the joint committee that framed the amendment: The
object was to preserve for the Negro a right “to hold property, be a party and witness in . . . (court).”(20) The
amendment was designed to backstop the Civil Rights Act.(21) It was intended to make sure that the black man
was not to be hanged “for a crime for which the white man is not to be hanged.”

These were the only considerations and intentions that Congress would agree to. The radicals recognized this.
Kelley of Pennsylvania, Schenck of Ohio, Eckley of Ohio, Thad Stevens himself confessed that the amendment,
in its final form, fell short of their vengeful desires.(22) The amendment, said Stevens, covered only civil rights
— it “does not touch social or political rights.”(23) And when the resolution finally was approved, on June 13,
could it be said the radicals had won? Obviously not: “Why, we defeated every radical proposition in it,”

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remarked John Sherman of Ohio.(24) It was not what the radicals wanted, says Professor James: “It was the best
that they could get.”(25)

It was the best they could get, for obvious reasons: Laws restricting the Negro, in one way or another, obtained
in 1866 not only in the vanquished South, but also in the victorious North. Had the Fourteenth Amendment been
intended to prohibit segregated schools, or to abolish State laws against inter-racial marriage, the amendment
would have been rejected by the North regardless of what the South might have done about it. This
consideration was so plain that it did not warrant discussion.

The Congress itself, it is clear, did not regard racial separation as inherently evil: It separated white and Negro in
the congressional galleries. More importantly, on May 8, 1866, barely a month before both houses approved the
Fourteenth Amendment, the Senate passed a bill (it became law in July) that established segregated schools in
Washington and Georgetown “for the sole use of . . . colored children.”(26) It is utterly incomprehensible that a
Congress, if it intended the Fourteenth Amendment to prohibit racially separate public schools, simultaneously
would have provided for such schools. Yet that is precisely what the 39th Congress did. That is what the
Congress, for more than eighty years thereafter, was to provide in Washington.

Nor did the ratifying States have the slightest doubt on this point. In Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Oregon,
and Wisconsin, Negro populations were so infinitesimally small that the question did not arise. This same thing
was essentially true of Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Rhode Island,
where segregated schools either had been prohibited before the Fourteenth Amendment came along, or were
prohibited contemporaneously with its adoption. But witness the roll call of States in which the same
legislatures that ratified the Fourteenth Amendment also provided for segregated schools: Alabama, Arkansas,
Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West
Virginia. We may also note seven States in which segregated schools existed both before and after their
ratification of the amendment: California, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Let it also be observed that within two years after the amendment had been proclaimed, while it still was fresh
in everyone’s mind, Indiana and Maryland joined the other segregation States in establishing racially separate
schools.

Can it be argued, seriously, that all the States were thus in immediate violation of the constitutional amendment
they had just adopted? The question refutes itself. Forget the Southern States. Is it conceivable that Ohio,
Indiana, and Pennsylvania would have “prohibited” separate schools by a constitutional amendment and then
instantly sanctioned them by State law? No. The evidence is overwhelming that the States, North and South,
which ratified the Fourteenth Amendment plainly understood that it never was intended to prohibit the
establishment and operation of racially separate schools, provided only that the schools were substantially equal.

Indeed, the evidence is plain that many States outside the South fully shared the South’s approval of segregated
schools. Was it a Southern governor who recommended, in June of 1867, that white and colored children “not
be placed together in the same schools,” since this would “create a dissatisfaction and conflict, and impair the
usefulness of the schools”? That was Governor Morton of Indiana.(27) Was it in a Southern State Legislature
that the House voted 72-1 for a law authorizing local school boards “to organize and maintain separate schools
for the education of white and colored children”? That was Kansas, in 1868.(28) At the time the amendment was
under consideration in Ohio, where it first was ratified in 1867 and then rejected in 1868, some ten thousand
Negro pupils were in segregated schools in fifty-two of Ohio’s eighty-eight counties.(29) New York City had
segregated schools. So did Pennsylvania, for a period of thirteen years after ratification of the amendment. In
West Virginia, the Legislature that ratified the amendment on January 16, 1867, on February 27, 1867, adopted
a statute providing that “white and colored persons shall not be taught in the same schools.” Consider any State
then in the Union or, if you please, out of the Union: In every case, without a single exception, the
understanding of the amendment’s effect on public education was perfectly accepted: It was not intended to
prohibit the establishment and maintenance of racially separate schools.

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This plain, unequivocal agreement was comprehended not only by the Congress and by the State legislatures,
but by both State and Federal judges also. In case after case, in the highest State courts, the propriety of separate
schools repeatedly was upheld. When the question first reached the Supreme Court of the United States, the
Court thought it too plain for argument. This was the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, involving racially separate
facilities in rail transportation. In upholding a Louisiana statute, the Court held that such laws have been
generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the State legislatures in the exercise of
their police power.

And the Court added, matter-of-factly:

The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored
children, which has been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of States where the
political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced.(30)

This same opinion was reiterated by a unanimous Court in 1899,(31) and again was upheld by a unanimous
Court as recently as 1927. In Gong Lum vs. Rice, Chief Justice Taft spoke for a Court that included such
luminous minds as those of Brandeis, Holmes, and Stone. “Were this a new question,” said the Court, and let
that qualification be noted carefully: Were this a new question, “it would call for very full argument and
consideration. . . .” But it was not a new question:

we think that it is the same question which has been many times decided to be within the constitutional power of
the State Legislature to settle without intervention of the Federal courts under the Federal Constitution.(32)

The power of the States to operate separate schools for Negroes and whites, said the Court, “does not conflict
with the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Now, the position taken by the Southern States today once was summed up clearly by Sutherland. He agreed, in
one of his dissenting opinions, that the Constitution is not static—that it is absurd to pretend an absolute rule of
stare decisis should be applied to constitutional constructions. The Constitution, he said, of course “is made up
of living words that apply to every new condition.” Then he added:

But to say, if that be intended, that the words of the Constitution mean today what they did not mean when
written—that is, that they do not apply now to a situation to which they would have applied then—is to rob that
instrument of the essential element which continues it in force as the people have made it until they, and not
their official agents, have made it otherwise.(33) [Emphasis supplied.]

This was exactly what Hughes had in mind in the Carter case when he asserted, on a question of labor relations,
that if the people wanted to vest such power in the Congress, they could do so “in the appropriate manner,” but
“it is not for the court to amend the Constitution by judicial decree.”(34) This was what Washington had in
mind, in his farewell address: “But let there be no change by usurpation; for, though this, in one instance, may
be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.” So, too, with
Madison, in his Virginia Report of 1799. So, too, with Jefferson: Should grave question arise, he said, of
whether a governmental power had been delegated or reserved, it is not for the Supreme Court to decide: “A
convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think
best.”(35)

It is idle to pretend in the matter under review that some new or different problem is involved in the operation of
public schools, as of 1954, that was not involved in the public schools as of 1868. There were public schools
then; there are public schools now. There were Negro pupils then; there are Negro pupils now. To be sure, it is
popularly believed that the schools are better now: They teach band, basket weaving, and traffic safety. It is
urged that the Negro is vastly different now—more cultured, more cultivated. But assuming all this to be true,

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the plain fact remains that if schools and society have changed, the Constitution has not changed by an
applicable comma. And it is the Constitution, not the lamentations of Gunnar Myrdal, that remains the supreme
law of the land. If it be the will of three-fourths of the States to amend the Constitution so as to prohibit the
operation of separate schools, then let the States, so desiring, get on with the job of constitutional amendment.
But only the States can amend the Constitution—the Court cannot.

The proposition can be challenged only by those centralists who are prepared to scrap the Constitution
altogether—to brush aside Article V and the Tenth Amendment as if these provisions simply did not exist. They
must interpolate into Article VI some new language that would make it read, “The Constitution as interpreted,
modified and revised by decrees of the Supreme Court, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in
pursuance thereof,” etc., shall be the supreme law of the land. But the Constitution does not say this. The
Constitution, in Article VI, does not mention the Supreme Court. What is to be the supreme law of the land? The
Constitution itself, the laws made in pursuance thereof, and the treaties made under Federal authority. That is
all. The Court’s sole authority is to decide cases in law and equity arising under the Constitution; and in
deciding them, it cannot validly go beyond the plain boundaries of the Constitution. When it steps beyond the
limits of interpretation, and crosses over into substantive amendment, it has usurped a power never delegated to
the Federal judiciary.

The charge of judicial encroachment is no thesis new to Southerners, vintage 1954. One of the great liberal
members of the Court, the first Justice Harlan, remarked long ago:

When the American people come to the conclusion that the judiciary of this land is usurping to itself the
functions of the legislative department of the government, and by judicial construction only is declaring what
should be the public policy of the United States, we will find trouble. Ninety millions of people—all sorts of
people—are not going to submit to the usurpation by the judiciary of the functions of other departments of the
government.(36)

Nor have the apprehensions voiced by Harlan been confined to liberals of the turn of the century. It was Mr.
Justice Holmes, dissenting in 1930 in Baldwin vs. Missouri, who criticized his brethren for “evoking a
constitutional prohibition from the void of ‘due process of law.’” Looking at the declining status of State rights
then, Holmes remarked that he could see “hardly any limit but the sky to the invalidating of those rights if they
happen to strike a majority of this court as for any reason undesirable.” And he added:

I cannot believe that the Amendment was intended to give us carte blanche to embody our economic or moral
beliefs in its prohibitions.(37)

So, too, Mr. Justice Black, who a decade ago was inclined to insist upon a strict adherence to the Constitution.
He denounced the theory that the Supreme Court has some boundless power under “natural law,” by which the
Court periodically may “expand and contract constitutional standards to conform to the Court’s conception of
what at a particular time constitutes ‘civilized decency’ and ‘fundamental liberty and justice.’“ Any such theory,
he said, tends to degrade Constitutional safeguards and simultaneously to appropriate to the Court “a broad
power which we are not authorized by the Constitution to exercise.” It is not for the Court, he concluded
ringingly, “to roam at large in the broad expanses of policy and morals and to trespass, all too freely, on the
legislative domain of the States as well as the Federal Government.”(38)

Chief Justice Vinson made the same point in Barrows vs. Jackson: “Since we must rest our decision on the
Constitution alone, we must set aside predilections on social policy and adhere to the settled rules which restrict
the exercise of our power to judicial review. . . .”(39) And even Mr. Justice Douglas, of all people, once also
recognized the dangers described by Harlan and Black and Vinson. He said this:

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From age to age the problem of constitutional adjudication is the same. It is to keep the power of government
unrestrained by the social or economic theories that one set of judges may entertain. It is to keep one age
unfettered by the fears and limited vision of another. There is in that connection one tenet of faith which has
crystallized more and more as a result of our long experience as a nation. It is this: If the social and economic
problems of State and Nation can be kept under political management of the people, there is likely to be long-
run stability. It is when a judiciary with life tenure seeks to write its social and economic creed into the Charter
that instability is created. For then the nation lacks the adaptability to master the sudden storms of an era. It
must be remembered that the process of constitutional amendment is a long and slow one.(40) [Emphasis
supplied.]

Mr. Justice Douglas, of course, tends to forget his own sage advice in the promotion of his own odd concepts of
sociology and economics. He is not the first to do so, nor the first to corrupt the Constitution in the process. It
was neither a Talmadge nor an Eastland that said of the Court:

The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working underground to
undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our Constitution from coordination
of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet.(41)

That was Thomas Jefferson, late in his life. It was Jefferson who saw the Supreme Court “advancing with a
noiseless and steady pace to the great object of consolidation.” It was Jefferson who warned most clearly, that
“You will have a . . . difficult task in curbing the Judiciary in their enterprises on the Constitution.”

Granted that the task is difficult, let the question be raised once more that has been posed from time to time
throughout this essay: How is the judiciary to be checked and brought to an accounting? Or is the high Court
alone, of all agencies of government, to go unchecked—never challenged effectively, never subjected to the
direct approval of the people? If it be conceded that the Court has the power to take one reserved right from the
States or the people, then what restrains it from seizing all rights? Can it be true, as Stone remarked in the Butler
case, that “the only check upon our own exercise of power is our own sense of self-restraint”? If this be true,
then a judicial oligarchy has been substituted for a republican government, and a divine right of judges has
replaced the divine right of kings. Five men—a majority of one on a Court of nine—may effectively arrogate
unto themselves the sovereign powers of not fewer than three-fourths of the States.

It cannot be imagined that a free people have thus abandoned the effective control of their fundamental law.
Judges are not divine; they are most pathetically mortal: In the brief span of Sixteen years, between 1937 and
1953, the Court reversed itself not fewer than thirty-two times on questions of constitutional law. It was no
Southern editor, but a member of the Court, Mr. Justice Roberts, who remarked despairingly in 1944 that the
stream of reversals

indicates an intolerance for what those who have composed this court in the past have conscientiously and
deliberately concluded, and involves an assumption that knowledge and wisdom reside in us which was denied
to our predecessors. . . . [It] tends to bring adjudications of this tribunal into the same class as a restricted
railroad ticket, good for this day and train only.(42)

The fundamental law of this Union cannot be maintained on any basis so “flexible” or “dynamic” as this. What
the South says, in the matter of school segregation, is that the Court settled the question nearly sixty years ago.
The Southern States thereafter had every right of law, and every guarantee of honor and fair dealing, to believe
that they were proceeding constitutionally in erecting and maintaining a system of racially separate schools. Had
there not been such assurance—had there ever been a question of their reserved powers—this system would not
have been established. The schools would not have been built, or would have been differently built.

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It was Trumbull of Illinois, certainly no Southern sympathizer, who declared in 1872 that “the right to go to
school is not a civil right and never was.”(43) The “right” of United States citizens, preserved from State
abridgment by the Fourteenth Amendment, is a right to substantially equal schools, not to the same or identical
schools. And it is the earnest contention of the South today that however imperfect its efforts may have been in a
poverty-stricken past to provide equal facilities for the children of both races, it approaches that constitutional
objective now. The sole function of the courts, in the eyes of a South pleading for stability in our basic law, is to
see to it that the intention of the law is fulfilled while the powers of the States over essentially domestic affairs
are left unimpaired.

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 3
Some Notes on Police Power
NOW, THE greatest of the State powers over essentially domestic affairs is the State’s “police power.” It is the
power the people themselves exercise when they prohibit beer in Kansas and authorize casinos in Las Vegas; it
covers the whole fabric of community relations, provides for public order, and undertakes to establish “for the
intercourse of citizen with citizen, those rules of good manners and good neighborhood which are calculated to
prevent a conflict of rights.”(44)

In the States of the Old South and the Deep South, legislative bodies over a long period of years—with the
complete sanction of Federal courts—have exercised their reserved police power to require a separation of white
and Negro races in certain areas of public life. Outside the South, the South’s requirements for racial separation
often are regarded as capricious and arbitrary, based upon mere bigotry or blind prejudice. There is a feeling on
the part of our critics that police power is being abused.

It is not the primary purpose of this essay to defend school segregation, or to dwell at any length upon the
conditions by which the practice may be justified in the South today. To paraphrase Mr. Chief Justice Marshall,
it is a Constitution that is being here expounded. Yet some of the considerations that are uppermost in the minds
of the South may well be sketched briefly, if only to emphasize the wisdom of the constitutional reservation to
the States of control over essentially domestic affairs.

It was William Alexander Percy (and the Southern Negro had no truer friend) who once commented that white
and black in the South, however, strongly they may exchange affections, understand each other not at all.
Between them, he said, is “a barrier of glass: you can’t see it, you only strike it.” An understanding of this glass
wall of separation is basic to any understanding of the American South, yet nothing is more difficult for the
visitor, intent upon diagnosing our social ills, to recognize or to comprehend. We of the South live, by necessity
and perhaps by instinct, in a dual society. Though white and Negro may stand patiently in queues together, side
by side in supermarkets and country stores; though we sleep at night a few hundred feet or a few acres apart,
white and Negro dwell in essentially separate worlds. On this basic separation, the whole structure of Southern
society is erected. Remove these pillars, tamper with them, undermine them, and the structure falls.

There are reasons for this separation. The experience of generations has demonstrated that in the South
(whatever may be true of the Negro in urban areas of the North and West) the Negro race, as a race, has
palpably different social, moral, and behavioral standards from those which obtain among the white race. After
generations of rising income, better housing, expanded education, improved communications—after years of
exposure to the amenities of civilization from which the Negro might profit by example —one out of every five
Negro children in the South today is the product of illicit sexual union. The rate of Negro illegitimacy, indeed, is
not improving: It grows worse. That necessary program of the professional welfare worker, styled “aid to
dependent children,” is very largely aid to Negro bastardy. When mention is made of these facts, the South’s
critics are wont to make two answers, one irrelevant, the other immaterial. The first is that “white slave owners
had Negro mistresses in Civil War days,” which has nothing to do with the illegitimate offspring of Negro men
and Negro women today. The second is that “low income and poor living conditions” account for it all, which is
no answer to the palpable fact that an illicit pregnancy results not from a low paycheck. That such promiscuity
must result in widespread venereal disease is as predictable as the case histories are demonstrable. In areas
where Negroes make up less than one-third of the population, colored patients account for 90 per cent of all
reported syphilis and gonorrhea.

The undisciplined passions which find one outlet in sex find another in crime. There were in Richmond in one
recent year thirty-four homicide cases; of these, twenty-eight were killings of Negroes by Negroes. It was a

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wholly typical year. The evidence in these cases follows a constant and elemental pattern: The unfaithful
woman, the triflin’ man; a fancied wrong, a bloody vengeance. Yet as often as not, the evidence discloses no
reason—no white man’s reason—that conceivably might justify murder: A quarrel, not even a serious quarrel,
and suddenly a razor flashes or a gun explodes. Monday morning in a Southern police court is a strange recital
of Saturday nights in Jackson Ward. What was the fight about? The defendant is mystified. “Me and Willie,” he
says winningly, “we’s friends, judge.” And where is Willie? He lies in St. Philip Hospital, with forty-two
stitches in his side.

Out of this milieu come Negro children—and often one’s heart goes out to them—pathetically ill-equipped to
compete with whites in public school education. As the experience of every Southern State has made vividly
clear, Negro pupils as a group are woefully less educable than white pupils as a group. In reading, in reasoning,
in educational aptitudes, in all the standardized tests that produce an “I.Q.,” the median Negro at the eighth
grade level customarily is found nearly three school years behind the median white. Is this deficiency to be
blamed upon the quality of the South’s Negro schools? Basically, the same findings have turned up in the
District of Columbia, where a bounteous Congress in times past provided the finest Negro schools on earth.

These are harsh truths to set down. They are truths that Negro leaders seldom bring themselves to face. The
figures, says Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, shrugging his well-groomed shoulders, are only “statistics.” Yet these
and many other considerations go far to explain the insistence—the determination—of white parents in the
South to maintain separate schools. They feel, and with some reason, that when the white people of a
community have provided 95 per cent of the funds for a Negro school, the white people have done all that
should be required of them. To be told that not only their taxes, but their sons and daughters also, must be
subrogated to the Negro—this is to ask of them something they ought not to be compelled to surrender.

What is it that the Court, in effect, has commanded the South to give up? It is no less than this: The basis of the
South’s society, the vitality of her culture. The Southern States are ordered, subject to drastic penalties, either to
abandon their schools or to breach the immutable law by which the South’s character has been preserved. And
the law is this: That white and black cannot come together, as equals, in any relationship that is intimate,
personal and prolonged. And when to these guides are added further considerations of sex, and of compulsion,
the barrier is complete.

Now, the only place—the only place—in which this line is threatened, and the law put in jeopardy, is in the field
of public education. On buses, in elevators, in crowded stores, in arenas and ballparks, the races may be brought
intimately together as equals, but the relation is not personal and it is not prolonged. On inter-racial boards and
commissions, the relationship is of equals, it may be personal, it often is prolonged; but it is not intimate.

Public schools are something else entirely. Here the relationship is keenly intimate—as intimate as two desks
touching, as two toilets in a washroom. It is personal—the social mingling of boys and girls in the same school
activities. It is prolonged over the twelve-year period of elementary and secondary education. In the formative
years of adolescence, the element of sex arises in its most dangerous and experimental form. And whether
school attendance is required by law, or dictated by society, the element of compulsion exists. To integrate the
schools of the Southern States thus is to demand a relationship forbidden by the mores of the people; and it is to
risk, twenty or thirty years hence, a widespread racial amalgamation and a debasement of the society as a whole.
This the Southern States are determined to resist. They will resist for a long, long time.

One thing more should be said: The South does not regard itself, in maintaining school separation, as “indicting
a whole race.” Every informed Southerner acknowledges—of course he acknowledges—that there are first-class
Negro communities and hosts of decent, respectable, law-abiding Negro teachers, bankers, students, artisans,
and servants. The South knows this better than any other region. For in no other part of the country has the
industrious Negro advanced further, or progressed more rapidly, or been more rewarded for individual merit
than in the Southern States. The pity is that the industrious are relatively so few.

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It is objected, to be sure, that the South’s system of segregated education imposes unfairly upon the individual
Negro student of unusual brilliance and capacity; it is urged that constitutional rights are individual, that they
attain to each citizen in his own right, and not as part of any group. The objection would have validity only if
constitutional rights were absolute rights, to be exercised by each person at his unfettered will. But no right is an
absolute right. The right of free exercise of religion does not sanction the handling of rattlesnakes at a Faith
Healers’ public meeting. The right of free speech, as Holmes once observed, gives no man the right to cry
“fire!” in a crowded theater. The right to bear arms embraces no right to conceal a pistol. Rights are individual
and “absolute” only as their exercise may act upon others.

So far as the Negro student’s “right” is concerned in the matter at bar, he holds no right to an education at public
expense. No one does. The maintenance of public schools is a State and local function, to be continued or
abandoned as the people choose. In the field of education, all that is required is that, if public education be
provided, substantially equal opportunities shall be made available to all. The Fourteenth Amendment, to quote
Thomas Cooley, never was intended to require “that every person in the land shall possess the same rights and
privileges as every other person.” The amendment, he said, “contemplates classes of person, and the protection
given by the law is to be deemed equal, if all persons in the same classes are treated alike under like
circumstances and conditions both as to privileges conferred and liabilities imposed.”(45)

In following Cooley’s maxim in the establishment of separate schools, the Southern States do not comprehend
that they are doing anything more than is done in countless other fields. Automobile liability rates, for one
example, commonly are fixed by public bodies at a higher level for drivers under twenty-five than for drivers
over that age. Does this imply that all drivers under twenty-five are unusual accident risks? Of course not.
Thousands of responsible teen-agers are better drivers than their fathers. What the rates reflect is the
demonstrably higher incidence of accidents among younger drivers as a class. Is there at Harvard or Chicago
some precocious lad, a Phi Beta Kappa and still in his teens? And is he denied the “right to vote,” though his
intellectual qualifications are infinitely superior to those of the ward boss? It is because those under twenty-one,
as a class, are treated differently from their elders in matters of franchise. The whole structure of our income
tax, for another example, rests upon class legislation. The class of individuals earning $100,000 a year fares far
differently from the class earning $3,000, yet it is not contended that “equal protection” is violated in tax rates
that vary from 20 per cent to 90 per cent.

Finally, it may be recalled that in Minnesota, whence cometh Senator Humphrey and other strong advocates of
integration, there once was a law which prohibited the sale of alcohol to Indians. Was this an unconstitutional
imposition upon the red man? Not so, said the Supreme Court of Minnesota:

The statute is a police regulation. It was enacted in view of the well-known social condition, habits and
tendencies of Indians as a race. While there are doubtless notable individual exceptions to the rule, yet it is a
well-known fact that Indians as a race are not as highly civilized as white; that they are less subject to moral
restraint; more liable to acquire an inordinate appetite for intoxicating liquors, and also more liable to be
dangerous to themselves and others when intoxicated.(46)

And Minnesota’s Chief Justice Rudkin added that the law was in no way “arbitrary class legislation.” The
difference in conditions between “Indians as a race and the white race,” he said, “constitutes a sufficient basis of
classification.”

Perhaps Senator Humphrey would insist that Minnesota was wrong then (this was 50 years ago), in legislating as
to Indians and liquor, and declare the Southern States equally wrong today, in legislating as to Negroes and
schools. Perhaps he would and perhaps some would agree. Yet is it not equally conceivable that the people of
Minnesota, in their wisdom, were right then, and that the South is equally right today? Is it not possible that in
each generation, in each society, the people who compose it and give their character to its institutions are

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themselves the best judges of the prudent exercise of the regulatory powers with which they invest their
government? Surely that has been the rule of “police power” through our history. It is a good rule now.

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 4
The Transcendent Issue
ONE WAY or another, for good or ill, the South will live through the problems created by the Court’s opinion
of May 17, 1954. As this is written, a sort of lull has come upon us. What began as a sudden and violent storm in
the summer of 1954 has settled down in the late autumn of 1956 to slow and steady rain. Now and then, as in
Sturgis and Clinton, lightning flashes; but over most of the South, the people have closed their shutters. From
time to time we even talk of other things. Many of us had begun to think we never would. Compulsory race-
mixing is progressing gradually through the border States, but the movement has not advanced to the point that a
permanent pattern has emerged. Here and there in the cities, as in Washington, it seems evident that integration
in schools in time will result in greater segregation of neighborhoods. In most urban areas, the prospect is that
the court’s sociological objective will be effectively frustrated simply by the unwillingness of a free people to be
coerced into a pattern of living unacceptable to them. It is far more difficult to venture predictions as to rural
areas, especially in the Deep South. Here the melancholy prospect is that, driven to a hard choice of bitter
alternatives, many counties will abandon public education altogether. Compelled finally to choose between
mixed schools and no schools, they will take no schools—that is to say, no public schools, for white parents, at
least, may be expected to form private educational corporations and educate their children without tax support.

What happens to the Negro children in these rural areas? God knows. The question troubles the thoughtful
Southerner far more than it appears to trouble either the Supreme Court or the NAACP. For the Southerner,
accustomed to looking after the Negro, cannot adjust easily to the idea of leaving the Negro to fend for himself.
Neither can he adjust, at all, to the idea of an intimate social relationship with individuals of a different race. He
is apprehensive for what the future holds; the tradition of defeat lies within him. Yet he is patient, and he feels
that time is on his side; one Reconstruction ended when his foes wore out, and he is possessed of that tradition
too.

Probably it is fruitless to speculate too much on the road ahead. The South sees itself, in all this, as a child of
Atreus. Endlessly it travels down the corridors of time, pursued like Orestes by fates it could not have prevented
and cannot possibly deter. The essence of Greek tragedy, Richmond Lattimore once wrote, is not that it pits
right against wrong, but that it pits right against right. This is the core of the South’s tragedy also, for the white
Southerner, enmeshed in the web of a dual society, is not insensitive to the aspirations and desires of the Negro
people with whom he dwells in so intimate a remoteness. He recognizes a certain rightness in Negro demands;
and until the school crisis arose, the white South had been moving in a score of areas toward relief of
grievances: In the hiring of Negro police and Negro firemen, in the election of Negroes to public office, in the
gradual relinquishment of Jim Crow laws in places of public assembly, in the opening of new job opportunities
to Negroes equally with whites—in these and in other fields, without the compulsion of court proceedings,
perceptible changes were taking place. Many other changes, not involving the intimate, personal, and prolonged
relationship of equals, could have been foreseen.

Now, with the Negro’s threat to the white South’s schools, the customs that had been yielding have stiffened
again. Until May of 1954, Southern cities were building public swimming pools, white and Negro, with public
funds; that work has stopped. The increasing pattern, in both urban areas and in rural communities, is one of
private recreational corporations, financed by individual families for their own use only. In one Virginia
community, which had for years operated a municipal golf course with certain days set aside for Negro use,
Negroes sued for completely integrated operation. The suit never even came to trial. The course simply was sold
the next day, in fee simple, to a fraternal lodge; and the sign at the front gate now reads, For Members and
Guests only.

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A fair presumption is that the future holds a great deal more of this; and the two societies, black and white,
instead of coming closer together in the South, will go more rigidly apart. If private school operation is found to
work successfully in rural communities where public schools are abandoned, a number of fair-sized cities may
also switch to a private operation. The South’s determination to preserve its essential institutions, and to stave
off what is seen as the catastrophe of racial amalgamation, grows daily more resolute.

Yet the fate of the schools, or the fate of the resisting Southern States, is not the most vital issue here at bar. Far
transcending any question of race or instruction, is the greater conflict over the stability of the Constitution. The
nature of education in the South is primarily the South’s concern; but the nature of the Union—the relationship
of the States to their Federal government—vitally concerns the American republic as a whole.

The decision in the school segregation cases was not the first major usurpation of power by the Supreme Court
in the postwar period. It was merely the most flagrant. It is keenly important to understand that the trend put
newly in motion under Vinson’s Court continues, at increasing speed, under Warren’s administration. If States
outside the South are to comprehend the peril before them, they would do well to look beyond the frontal fight
of Brown vs. Board of Education to the flanking decisions in which State powers also are being steadily
destroyed.

Half a dozen such mileposts will suffice to mark the way. They involve drillers for oil off California and the
Gulf; a small trucker in Pennsylvania; a railwayman named Hanson; a Communist, Steve Nelson; a professor of
German, Harry Slochower; a thief named Griffin. Their cases are all a part of the ending and beginning.

Let us go back, then, to June 23, 1947. That was the day the Court, by a 6-2 decision, undertook on its own fiat
to seize for the United States government “the lands, minerals and other things of value” underlying the Pacific
Ocean along the coast of California for a distance three miles seaward from the ordinary low water mark. This
was the first “Tidelands” case.(47)

As Justice Black defined the issues, four principal questions were presented. On each of these, the majority of
the Court ruled flatly against the position taken by California.

California first raised an entirely proper question of jurisdiction. Under the Constitution, the Supreme Court has
original jurisdiction “in all cases . . . in which a State shall be Party.” It was California’s contention, and an
entirely sound one, that this was no “case” in the plain and commonly understood meaning of the word. This
was not a legal proceeding in which one State, or two States or three States, had filed suit against the State of
California. It was, in brief, a proceeding in which the national government was suing a State; but if it ever
crossed the minds of Justice Black that the Supreme Court, as the judicial branch of the national government,
was not the proper forum in which to hear the national government’s claim against a State, no such concern may
be found in his opinion. He was satisfied that the “conflicting claims of governmental powers,” which is to say,
conflicting claims of Federal and State officials, should be disposed of by the Federal Court.

California contended, secondly, that if one State were to be sued by all the States collectively, then some such
authorization for the proceeding should be shown. Had Congress authorized the suit? Plainly, Congress had not.
Indeed, Congress twice had refused to grant such authority to the Attorney General (in 1937 and 1939), and in
1946 had approved a joint resolution (vetoed by the President), in which the States were given quitclaim to the
three-mile belt. The majority of the Court ruled that the Attorney General, whether or not Congress approved,
had sufficient authority vested in his office to bring the action anyhow.

The third contention went directly to the merits. California marshaled impressive testimony to show that the
original thirteen States, as an attribute of sovereign power, held title to a three-mile belt of land underlying the
Atlantic Ocean on their borders. As a State admitted on an equal basis, California properly claimed an equal
sovereign privilege. Further, California was able to show that this ownership of coastal areas had been plainly

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acknowledged by the Congress at the time California was admitted to the Union; by definition nailed into her
State Constitution, California had fixed her boundaries three English miles from shore. All this made no
impression on Mr. Justice Black. He expounded the right and responsibility of the United States Government “as
a member of the family of nations” to maintain national security in coastal waters. (Not one living soul ever had
challenged this right or responsibility). Mr. Justice Black waxed eloquent on the conduct of foreign relations.
(No one had questioned the conduct of foreign relations). And then in a complete non sequitur, Mr. Justice
Black concluded that the only question to be decided was “whether the State or the Federal government has the
paramount right and power to determine in the first instance when, how, and by what agencies, foreign or
domestic, the oil and other resources of the soil of the marginal sea, known or hereafter discovered, may be
exploited.” His conclusion, of course, was that “California is not the owner of the three-mile marginal belt along
its coast, and that the Federal government rather than the State has paramount rights in and power over that belt,
an incident to which is full dominion over the resources of the soil under that water area, including oil.”

Finally, the Court majority swept aside California’s defense that over a long period of years, agents and agencies
of the Federal government repeatedly had acknowledged California’s dominion over the off-shore properties.
The Federal government, indeed, had acquired title to some of this land by deed from the State; the Department
of the Interior had denied coastal leases on the ground that California owned the lands. Perhaps officials of the
government had been negligent, Mr. Justice Black agreed. It did not matter. Federal ownership was not to be
denied “by the ordinary court rules” of civil cases. Mr. Justice Black would make up new rules. The majority
ordered an appropriate decree prepared.

Two members of the Court dissented. It is important to note what they said. Mr. Justice Reed faced the issue
squarely. When the Union was formed, he said, “the original States were sovereignties in their own right,
possessed of so much land underneath the adjacent seas as was generally recognized to be under their
jurisdiction.” (Emphasis supplied.) Thus, he said, “the original States owned the lands under the seas to the
three-mile limit.” And because California entered the Union on an equal basis, California “had the same rights
bordering its littoral.” Then he pointed out what Black had been unable to see:

This ownership in California would not interfere in any way with the needs or rights of the United States in war
or peace. The power of the United States is plenary over these undersea lands precisely as it is over every river,
farm, mine, and factory of the nation.(48)

Mr. Justice Frankfurter, as is his custom, approached the matter obliquely. He laid down the view, in his
dissenting opinion, that no one owned the land: It was simply “unclaimed land.” He said this:

Of course the United States has “paramount rights” in the sea belt of California—the rights that are implied by
the power to regulate interstate and foreign commerce, the power of condemnation, the treaty-making power, the
war power. We have not before us the validity of the exercise of any of these paramount rights. Rights of
ownership are here asserted—and rights of ownership are something else. Ownership implies acquisition in the
various ways in which land is acquired—by conquest, by discovery, and claim, by cession, by prescription, by
purchase, by condemnation. When and how did the United States acquire this land?”(49)

The answer, Mr. Justice Frankfurter implied on the following page, was that his colleagues had acquired it just
now. They had undertaken to establish a federal interest “by sliding from absence of ownership by California to
ownership by the United States.”

Three years later, on June 7, 1950, the Supreme Court continued its slide. Louisiana had resisted the Court’s
usurpation of her property, just as California had resisted. The Court paid as little attention. Louisiana raised the
same jurisdictional objection; this time the Court did not even discuss the point. Louisiana had conceded,
willingly, that the Federal government had “paramount rights” in the property “to the extent of all governmental
powers existing under the Constitution, laws and treaties of the United States.” But the Court majority, speaking

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this time through Mr. Justice Douglas, was not interested in rights acquired pursuant to the Constitution, laws
and treaties. The Court was busy forging new law of its own. Thus, “the claim to our three-mile belt was first
asserted by the national government” (this, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence to the contrary), and “the
marginal sea is a national, not a State concern.” Louisiana had not denied it. But “concern” is one thing,
Louisiana argued, and ownership quite another. Mr. Justice Douglas could not see the distinction. The California
case, he held, was controlling.(50)

On the same day, again speaking through Douglas, the Court brushed aside a solid case established by the State
of Texas for continued ownership of her own offshore land. Texas had an even better case than California and
Louisiana could offer, for there was no question—rather, it was thought there was no question—of the terms and
conditions under which the independent Republic of Texas had been annexed to the United States a century
before. Mr. Justice Douglas handsomely agreed that prior to admission, Texas was an independent nation which
possessed “not only full sovereignty over the marginal sea but ownership of it, of the land underlying it, and of
all the riches which it held.” But when Texas became a State, by his reasoning, the “equal status” doctrine came
to apply in reverse: Texas did not gain what other States had claimed; it lost what it clearly had.

Justices Reed and Minton balked at this decision, and Mr. Justice Frankfurter demurred. (Because Jackson and
Clark took no part, several billion dollars in property thus were wrested from Texas by four men alone—Vinson,
Black, Douglas, and Burton.) Reed emphasized that the doctrine of “equal footing,” as he saw it, always had
been held to embrace only political rights. The majority, he said, was interpreting the doctrine so as “to take
away from a newly admitted State property that it had theretofore owned.” Mr. Justice Reed, joined by Mr.
Justice Minton, could see “no constitutional requirement that this be done.” The needs of defense and foreign
affairs, Reed observed, cannot transfer title to an ocean bed “any more than they could transfer iron ore under
uplands from State to federal ownership.”

In his own separate dissent, Mr. Justice Frankfurter remarked briefly, with a strange deference to stare decisis—
a deference not to be visible four years later—that “time has not made the reasoning of United States vs.
California . . . more persuasive, but the issue there decided is no longer open for me.” In the Texas case, he was
satisfied that the lands in controversy “were part of the domain of Texas when she was on her own.” And he
added: “The court now decides that when Texas entered the Union she lost what she had and the United States
acquired it. How that shift came to pass remains for me a puzzle.”(51)

There was no puzzle here. The United States never acquired the contested coastal lands by any valid process. A
majority of the Supreme Court simply seized them. And it took a subsequent act of Congress to put them back
again.

The Court has not been content to claim fields of oil; in the steady move toward aggrandizement of the Federal
government, it has claimed whole fields of law also. This is the process of “preemption,” by which the Court
holds that where Congress has occupied one area of government regulation, the States may not be there too:
Congress has “preempted” the field as a whole.

Cases from Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Texas may illustrate the point. In December, 1953, the Court decided the
case of Garner, et al, trading as Central Transfer Co. vs. the Teamsters Union.(52) Here the facts were that four
of Garner’s twenty-four employees belonged to the Teamsters Union. His was a small operation; he had no
objection if all the workers joined—it was a matter for the workers themselves to decide. This attitude of
indifference was not the sort of cooperation the union thought sufficient, so the union began picketing Garner’s
terminal. There was no controversy, no labor dispute, no strike—but the effect of the picketing was to destroy
Garner’s business. His volume of freight declined by 95 per cent as shippers’ unionized drivers refused to cross
the picket line. In desperation, he obtained an injunction from a State court under the Pennsylvania Labor
Relations Act, to put an end to the picketing. The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court, by a divided ruling,
reversed the trial court and ordered the injunction dissolved. It was the appellate court’s view that Garner’s

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grievance fell within the purview of the National Labor Relations Board, and hence that a State remedy was
precluded.

With this viewpoint, the United States Supreme Court agreed. It affirmed the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Clearly, said Mr. Justice Jackson, Congress had vested the NLRB with power to hear such complaints. The only
question was whether a State, through its own courts, could extend its own form of relief also. He thought not.
Congress had confided primary interpretation of “unfair labor practices” to a specific and specially constituted
tribunal of the Federal government. “Congress evidently considered that centralized administration of specially
designed procedures was necessary to obtain uniform application of the substantive rules and to avoid diversities
and conflicts likely to result from a variety of local procedures and attitudes toward labor controversies.” That is
a long and misty sentence, but the meaning emerges on examination: In the eyes of the Court, uniformity is the
thing; conformity is to be revered; diversity and variety (which is to say, locally administered law to deal with
local problems) must be deplored. Mr. Garner’s plea in this case was that a local Pennsylvania court could act
promptly—it could provide a timely remedy which might mean something; a petition to the NLRB might
languish for months while his business declined to nothing at all. Mr. Garner’s small problem moved the Court
not at all. “A multiplicity of tribunals and a diversity of procedures are quite as apt to produce incompatible or
conflicting adjudications as are different rules of substantive law.” This doubtless was a great solace to the
plaintiff.

Attention also may be directed to another opinion affecting the trucking industry, just one year later. In this
case,(53) Attorney General Latham Castle of Illinois argued vehemently in behalf of an Illinois statute which
permitted the State itself to crack down effectively on willful violators of the State’s load limit law. It was
shown that a truck line repeatedly had ignored the State’s limits on gross weight and axle weight. When all else
failed, the State sought to prohibit the trucker from using State highways for a period of 90 days. But the
trucking company contended—successfully—that the State of Illinois could not thus deny him the use of Illinois
highways. When he operated in interstate commerce, said the trucker, he operated under the protecting wings of
the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Federal Motor Carrier Act.

Quite true, said Mr. Justice Black for a unanimous Court. When Congress adopted a “comprehensive plan” for
regulating the trucking industry in interstate commerce, the “former power of States over interstate motor
carriers was greatly reduced.” No power at all, said the Court, was left in the States to determine what carriers
could or could not operate on their highways in interstate commerce. The carriers might violate every law on the
books of the State; they might ruin highways with excessive gross loads; they might weaken bridges by repeated
strain upon them. And what could the States do? The States could rely upon “the conventional forms of
punishment”; the States could plead with the ICC; but the one punishment that would mean the most—to deny a
carrier the use of State roads until he behaved—that punishment the States could not impose. Only an agency of
the Federal government could do that.

One of the most startling encroachments by the Court upon State powers occurred on April 2, 1956, when the
Court, by a 6-3 decision, dismissed Pennsylvania’s prosecution against Steve Nelson, an admitted
Communist.(54) Here the issue, again, was one of Federal preemption—or as Mr. Chief Justice Warren termed
it, the “supercession” of State laws. Nelson had been convicted in the trial courts of Pennsylvania for violation
of a State anti-sedition act. There he had been sentenced to prison for twenty years, and fined $10,000 plus court
costs of $13,000. The State Supreme Court had reversed the conviction on the single, helpless ground that the
United States government had so preempted the field of sedition law that Pennsylvania’s State law, covering the
same offenses, lacked validity.

Mr. Chief Justice Warren and his colleagues upheld this view. Surveying all the acts passed by Congress against
sedition, the Court majority found the conclusion “inescapable that Congress has intended to occupy the field of
sedition.” Taken as a whole, said Warren, the several Federal acts “evince a congressional plan which makes it
reasonable to determine that no room has been left for the States to supplement it.” And among other things, in

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the majority’s view, to permit State prosecution of sedition would be to present “serious danger of conflict with
the administration of the Federal program.” Quoting from the Garner case, Warren found it exceedingly unwise
to permit the States “to exercise a concurrent jurisdiction in this area.” The States, he feared, might get in the
way: That would never do. Therefore, “since we find that Congress has occupied the field to the exclusion of
parallel State legislation, that the dominant interest of the Federal government precludes State intervention, and
that administration of State acts would conflict with the operation of the federal plan, we are convinced that the
decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is unassailable.”

Three members of the Court—Reed, Burton, and Minton— dissented strongly. The effect of the majority
opinion, they noted, was to void the anti-sedition laws of forty-two states, Alaska, and Hawaii. Reed pointed out
the flat and obvious fact (immediately attested by an outraged Howard Smith of Virginia) that Mr. Smith’s act
never had “specifically barred the exercise of State power to punish the same acts under State law.” On the
contrary, the act had been inserted routinely in Title 18 of the United States Code, which begins with an
encompassing recital that “Nothing in this title shall be held to take away or impair the jurisdiction of the courts
of the several States under the laws thereof.”

But in the minority’s view, there was something more important than this: “We are citizens of the United States
and of the State wherein we reside, and are dependent upon the strength of both to preserve our rights and
liberties.” (Emphasis supplied.) Both State and Federal legislative bodies, said the minority, may enact laws for
mutual protection unless Congress has otherwise provided. In the instant case, there was not a scintilla of
evidence to suggest that State anti-sedition acts had hampered or embarassed the Department of Justice. On the
contrary, the Department of Justice itself had avowed that “the administration of the various State laws has not,
in the course of the fifteen years that the Federal and State sedition laws have existed side by side, in fact
interfered with, embarrassed or impeded the enforcement of the Smith Act.” No better disclaimer could be
suggested.

Nevertheless, the decision of the majority, of course, prevailed. And in one contemptuous sweep of the pen, the
concept of a union of States was further degraded. The States were left, gratuitously, with a meaningless power
to punish acts calculated to overthrow a State government, but they were denied (in the language of the
dissenting opinion) their plain right “to punish local acts of sedition, nominally directed against the United
States.”

It may be argued, perhaps, that the importance of the Nelson case has been over-inflated. Few of the forty-two
States with anti-sedition acts ever had launched so much as a single prosecution under their laws. Yet from a
broader standpoint, the importance of the majority opinion in the Nelson case scarcely can be overemphasized.
In the very act of adopting their anti-sedition acts, the States had exercised some of the old and far-off
prerogatives of sovereign States. The significance of the Nelson opinion is to be found in the fact that the Court
recognized these stirrings of sovereign spirit, and set about to quash them. In the eyes of the Court majority, for
the States to punish sedition would be for States to behave as States. And this, above all things, the States must
never be permitted to do.

Just three weeks after the Nelson opinion came down, the cause of States’ rights was even more seriously
crippled by the court’s ruling in Griffin vs. Illinois.(55) Curiously, this far-reaching 5-4 decision of the Court
claimed little attention. A more damaging blow against the concept of State sovereignty seldom has been struck.

Here the facts were that two men, Griffin and Crenshaw, had been convicted in Illinois of armed robbery.
Immediately after their conviction, they had filed a motion in the trial court demanding that a stenographic
transcript of the record be furnished them without cost. The State law on the subject limited such free transcripts
to pauper defendants placed under sentence of death; in all other cases, State law permitted appeals to be taken
simply on a narrative record of alleged errors in the trial, plus a complete bill of exceptions. The petitioners

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argued that lack of a stenographic transcript would prevent them from the “equal protection of the law” that
might be enjoyed by wealthy defendants in the same position.

The court majority, speaking through Mr. Justice Black, sympathetically agreed. For the purposes of their
decision, the majority assumed that the two felons, if only they had a transcript, could point to reversible error in
the trial court proceedings. This was unthinkable: “In criminal trials a State can no more discriminate on account
of poverty than on account of religion, race or color. . . . There is no meaningful distinction between a rule
which would deny the poor the right to defend themselves in a trial court and one which effectively denies the
poor an adequate appellate review accorded to all who have money enough to pay the costs in advance. . . .
There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.”

Four members of the Court concurred in that opinion, and Mr. Justice Frankfurter uneasily concurred in the
result. It is a frequent device of Mr. Justice Frankfurter to join what he deems to be the right side, but for his
own reasons. Here he pointed out that obviously, the State of Illinois could not be held responsible for the
varying economic conditions of defendants in criminal trials. And “of course,” he said, a State in providing for
appellate review, “need not equalize economic conditions.” After all, said Mr. Justice Frankfurter, thoughtlessly
demolishing the whole spurious structure of his four colleagues’ opinion, “a man of means may be able to afford
the retention of an expensive, able counsel not within reach of a poor man’s purse.” These are contingencies of
life “which are hardly within the power, let alone the duty, of a State to correct or cushion.”

Four members of the Court, to judge by the tone of their dissenting opinions, were sorely concerned at the
majority’s palpable intrusion upon long-established prerogatives of the States. In a beautifully reasoned
dissenting opinion, Mr. Justice Harlan pointed out, gravely, that the effect of the majority’s opinion would be to
create “a host of problems affecting the status of an unknown multitude of indigent convicts.” The record, he
insisted, was too obscure possibly to justify a decision of so sweeping an impact. Apart from this, he sharply
attacked the majority’s plea that “the poor” and “the rich” must fare equally. This declaration, he said wryly,
“hardly sheds light on the true character of the problem confronting us here.” What was the true character? Let
Mr. Justice Harlan speak at length. What he has to say bears on many other constitutional problems under
review in these notes:

. . . no economic burden attendant upon the exercise of a privilege bears equally upon all, and in other
circumstances the resulting differentiation is not treated as an invidious classification by the State, even though
discrimination against “indigents” by name would be unconstitutional. Thus, while the exclusion of “indigents”
from a free State university would deny them equal protection, requiring the payment of tuition fees surely
would not, despite the resulting exclusion of those who could not afford to pay the fees. And if imposing a
condition of payment is not the equivalent of a classification by the State in one case, I fail to see why it should
be so regarded in another.

Thus, said Mr. Justice Harlan, the crucial point was not whether the State had created legal disabilities on the
basis of a reasonable classification, but rather—and this is vital—whether the State possibly could be
condemned as unreasonable for failing “to remove natural disabilities.” (Emphasis supplied.) For his own part,
Mr. Justice Harlan was not ready to label this “discrimination” on the part of Illinois.

Mr. Justice Harlan concluded by commenting that the legal matter at issue was primarily a question of the
criminal procedure provided by Illinois in her own State courts. “Whatever might be said were this a question of
procedure in the Federal courts,” he added, “regard for our system of federalism requires that matters such as
this be left to the States.” He thought it beyond the province of the Court to tell Illinois that it must provide the
procedures thought desirable by the majority.

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Harlan then joined three other members of the Court (Burton, Minton, and Reed) in a separate dissenting
opinion emphasizing further objections to the opinion of the majority. The four agreed that free stenographic
transcripts in criminal proceedings may constitute “a desirable social policy,” but—let this be noted carefully—

what may be good legislative policy is not necessarily required by the Constitution of the United States. Persons
charged with crimes stand before the law with varying degrees of economic and social advantage. Some can
afford better lawyers and better investigations of their cases. Some can afford bail, some cannot. Why fix bail at
any reasonable sum if a poor man can’t make it?

The Constitution requires the equal protection of the laws, but it does not require the States to provide equal
financial means for all defendants to avail themselves of such laws.

Mr. Justice Black’s opinion . . . is an interference with State power for what may be a desirable result, but which
we believe to be within the field of local option. [Emphasis supplied.]

Is it necessary, really, to add anything to this final sentence?

Brief review of two or three more cases will suffice to suggest the trend against the States. We may study with
profit the Phillips case, decided June 7, 1954.(56) Here a majority of the Court seized from the Southwestern
States the State control of natural-gas production and gathering which historically they had exercised. As
Justices Clark and Burton emphasized pointedly in a dissenting opinion, the Natural Gas Act specifically
provided that the act was not to apply to the production or gathering of natural gas. “Language could not express
a clearer command,” they remarked, yet the majority had rendered the language “almost entirely nugatory.” And
they added:

By today’s decision, the Court restricts the phrase “production and gathering” to “the physical activities,
facilities, and properties” used in production and gathering. Such a gloss strips the words of their substance. If
the Congress so intended, then it left for State regulation only a mass of empty pipe, vacant processing plants
and thousands of hollow wells with scarecrow derricks, monuments to this new extension of Federal power. It
was not so understood.

Rather, said the dissenting justices, the legislative history of the act, the demonstrable interpretation placed upon
the act by the Federal Power Commission, and the obvious prospect that Federal regulation would seriously
interfere with State conservation practices—all these considerations established a clear intent on the part of
Congress that production and gathering of gas should be exempt from Federal control. “Observance of good
faith with the States,” said the minority, “requires that we interpret this Act as it was represented at the time they
urged its enactment, as its terms read, and as we have, until today, declared it, viz., to supplement but not to
supplant State regulation.”

It is a long jump from the natural gas fields of Texas and Oklahoma to the academic groves of Brooklyn
College, New York City, but let us take it. On September 24, 1952, the Internal Security Subcommittee of the
Senate Committee on the Judiciary held hearings in New York. One of the witnesses was Dr. Harry Slochower,
associate professor of German. He had been identified by another witness as a member of the Communist party,
prior to 1941. Dr. Slochower was asked about this. And Dr. Slochower declined to answer. He took the Fifth
Amendment. He lost his job. He sued to regain it.

To understand the legal point at issue, it is necessary to look much farther back, to the time of the Samuel
Seabury Report of 1932. That was an investigation into graft and corruption in the municipal government of
New York City. During the course of that investigation, a number of city employees were summoned, only to
assert before the frustrated Mr. Seabury that a truthful answer to the questions he propounded them might tend
to incriminate them, and therefore they declined to answer. In his final report, Mr. Seabury recommended an

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ordinance that in 1938 became Section 903 of the Charter of the City of New York. It provided that whenever an
employee of the city utilized the privilege against self-incrimination in order to avoid answering questions
relating to his official conduct, “his term or tenure of office or employment shall terminate and such office or
employment shall be vacant.” As the highest courts of New York were to interpret the provision, any employee
who invoked the Fifth Amendment was to be deemed, as of that moment, to have tendered his resignation.

Thus when Dr. Slochower, in September of 1952, declined to answer questions concerning his membership in
the Communist party in 1940 and 1941, Section 903 came into play. He had been twenty-seven years at
Brooklyn College. Abruptly, his tenure terminated. It was the professor’s contention that this summary dismissal
(for he did not agree that he had “resigned”) was an infringement upon his guarantee of due process of law. By a
5-4 division, the Supreme Court of the United States accepted his contention. In the eyes of Mr. Justice Clark
and his colleagues on the majority, New York City’s Section 903 was a perversion of a constitutional right. The
charter section, as they saw it, served to impute “a sinister meaning” to the exercise of the Fifth Amendment; it
was as if New York City regarded this privilege “as equivalent either to a confession of guilt or a conclusive
presumption of perjury.” Appalled at this thought, the majority denounced “the heavy hand” of New York’s
arbitrary statute, and ordered the lower court reversed.(57)

Reed, Burton, and Minton dissented in vigorous terms. They commented that the majority’s opinion “strikes
deep into the authority of New York to protect its local government institutions from influences of officials
whose conduct does not meet the declared State standards for employment.” Then they made clear what the
majority had been strangely unable to see—that New York’s Section 903 established not a judgment of
disloyalty, but a standard of propriety. The city “does have reasonable ground to require its employees either to
give evidence regarding facts of official conduct within their knowledge or to give up the positions they hold.”
An employee who lacks candour, in the eyes of New York, is “a person unfit to hold certain official positions.”
New York had decided “it did not want that kind of public employees,” and the dissenting three added: “We
think New York had that right.”

Mr. Justice Harlan, dissenting separately, boiled the bone of contention down still further: “In effect, what New
York has done is to say that it will not employ teachers who refuse to cooperate with public authorities when
asked questions relating to official conduct. . . . I think that a State may justifiably consider that teachers who
refuse to answers questions concerning their official conduct are no longer qualified for public school teaching,
on the ground that their refusal to answer jeopardizes the confidence that the public should have in the school
system.”

But, again, the majority prevailed. As this is written, the supreme law of the land (which is to say, the
Constitution, which is to say, the Constitution rewritten by the Supreme Court of the United States) thus limits a
State in fixing the standards of propriety a State may demand of its own public servants in matters of their
official conduct.

For a final case (and especially because of some things Mr. Justice Douglas had to say), we may consider the
Court’s unanimous action in ordering Robert L. Hanson, Horace A. Cameron, Harold J. Grau, and others, to join
an AFL railway union in order to hold their jobs on the Union Pacific Railroad. Messrs. Hanson, Cameron, and
Grau did not want to join the union. They regarded themselves not only as citizens of the United States, but also
as citizens of Nebraska, and they pinned their faith in a provision of the Nebraska Constitution: “No person shall
be denied employment because of . . . nonmembership in a labor organization.” But the Union Pacific entered
into a union shop contract, and the objecting employees were ordered to join the union within sixty days or lose
their jobs, their seniority, their pensions, and their other rights. The Nebraska Supreme Court held that they
could not be forced into a labor organization against their will—that they had a right to work, under the
Nebraska Constitution, which could not be denied them.

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But the Supreme Court of the United States held otherwise. Speaking through Mr. Justice Douglas, the Court
declared that Congress had acted within its powers in 1951, when it wrote a sanction for union shop contracts
into the Railway Labor Act. The Court was careful to point out that its decision was directed to one narrow
issue: If the objecting workers found their political freedom infringed, or other personal liberties denied them by
union coercion, they might return to the courts for redress. But the union shop clause was an “allowable”
provision for facilitating interstate commerce, and the court would not interfere.

Why would the Court not interfere? Let us pay close heed:

The question is one of policy with which the judiciary has no concern. . . . Congress, acting within its
constitutional powers, has the final say on policy issues. If it acts unwisely, the electorate can make a change.
The task of the judiciary ends once it appears that the legislative measure adopted is relevant or appropriate to
the constitutional power which Congress exercises. The ingredients of industrial peace and stabilized labor-
management relations are numerous and complex. They may well vary from age to age and from industry to
industry. What would be needful one decade might be anathema the next. The decision rests with the policy
makers, not with the judiciary.(58) [Emphasis supplied.]

A citizen of Virginia may perhaps be forgiven some bitterness, as he reads over this pious dictum from the
Supreme Court of the United States. “The question is one of policy with which the judiciary has no concern.”
For nearly ninety years, it has been universally understood that the maintenance of racially separated public
schools was a matter of State policy; that the ingredients of this problem were “numerous and complex”; that
they varied from age to age and from State to State; that what a State regarded as necessary in one decade it
might abandon in the next. And all such decisions had been held to rest with the policy makers, not with the
judiciary. For if the policy makers acted unwisely, the electorate could make a change. But the electorate cannot
touch a supreme judiciary appointed for life.

“We have come full circle,” said Mr. Justice Frankfurter, concurring in the Hanson case. He was reflecting that
in the Adair case (1908), the Court had upheld the “right” of railway companies to deny work to a union man.
Now, in 1956, they had upheld the right of unions to deny work to a non-union man. From sanctioning the
“yellow dog” contracts of the turn of the century, the Court had come to bless the union shop contracts of our
own time. The former were now universally condemned. But the latter? The latter had become “allowable.” And
no State could be permitted to say otherwise.

These cases (and countless others could be cited) define a trend: The deification of the Federal government, and
the steady stultification of the States. They point to a problem, a great and difficult constitutional problem. It
certainly is not a new one. It existed in Jefferson’s day, and in Calhoun’s, and for that matter, in Teddy
Roosevelt’s also. It is to preserve unto the States, for good or ill, that which is rightfully the States’, and to guard
with equal jealousy that which is the proper function of the Federal government. Yet to an ominous degree, the
problem now is far more acute than it has ever been before. When Jefferson and Calhoun were protesting most
furiously, enormous areas of public administration remained to the States; even at the turn of the century, States’
rights still held some meaning. Now, month by passing month, the States steadily are being stripped of the last
of their sovereign powers—not by their own wish, as expressed through constitutional amendment—but by
judicial usurpation. Those who had conceived the Constitution itself to be the supreme law of the land are now
told, imperiously, that today’s opinions of the Court, however palpably in violation of the Constitution these
mandates may be, are supreme above all things. We are told to bow and fawn before a judicial oligarchy which
has asserted unto itself powers as arrogant as those of any tyrant: “This is compassionate,” says the Court,
“therefore it is constitutional.” This, in the Court’s view, is socially desirable; therefore the Court will make it
the law. And to resist, as in Clinton, is to travel in handcuffs to Knoxville, there to face prosecution for
contempt.

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The end of this process is the corruption of a constitutional Union, by judicial fiat, into a consolidated
government in which the States are mere political dependencies. The end is a centralization of all meaningful
powers in the hands of Federal authority. And so long as the constructions placed by the Court upon the
Constitution are agreeable to one-third of the House of Representatives, plus one, timely remedy cannot even be
found in constitutional amendment.

The remedy lies—it must lie—in drastic resistance by the States, as States, to Federal encroachment. “If those
who voluntarily created the system cannot be trusted to preserve it,” asked Calhoun, “who can?” The checking
and controlling influence of the people, exerted as of old, through their States, can indeed preserve the
constitutional structure. The right to interpose the will of the sovereign people, in order that the evils of
encroachment may be arrested, once more can be exerted toward the preservation of a Union and the dignity of
States.

A long time ago, a great Virginian had this to say: “So far as our [Federal] government is concerned, I venture to
predict that it will become absolute and irresponsible, precisely in proportion as the rights of the States shall
cease to be respected and their authority to interpose for the correction of Federal abuses shall be denied and
overthrown.”(59)

Abel Parker Upshur’s prediction of 1840 has been grimly fulfilled. The American people have lost sight of the
old concept that the States, as such, form the balance wheel—in Upshur’s term, “the only effectual check upon
Federal encroachments.” We have lived to see the truth of his prophecy, that the danger to constitutional
separation of powers is “not that the States will interpose too often, but that they will rather submit to Federal
usurpations, than incur the risk of embarrassing the government, by any attempts to check and control it.”

The States have submitted too long to Federal usurpations. At their grave peril, they can submit no longer.
Through every device of interposition they can bring to bear—political, legislative, judicial—once more they
must invoke their sovereign powers to insist that Federal encroachments be restrained. Thankfully, half-a-dozen
Southern States—Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia—have spoken
through their legislatures against the Court. The people of Texas and Arkansas, by referendum, have approved
the doctrine of interposition. Southerners in Congress have made their position clear in a ringing Manifesto,
denouncing judicial legislation. The Supreme Court of Georgia has not hesitated to rebuke the Supreme Court in
Washington: “We will not supinely surrender sovereign powers of this State.”(60) This awakening of State
sovereignty, met at first with mockery and ridicule, will be met next with all the hostility and force that
centralists can bring to bear. If this force is to be overcome, the conservatives of this Republic—those who
believe in limited government and in individual responsibility—must be prepared to risk those sacrifices which
the hour demands. Others have risked them before—a Matthew Lyon in Vermont, a Michael Bright in
Pennsylvania, a Troup in Georgia, a Calhoun in South Carolina, a Booth in Wisconsin, a Sullivan in Ohio, a
Young in Minnesota. These and many others, strong in their convictions, have dared to hold their ground when
lesser men surrendered.

Yet there is one thing more that also must be done. The States, for their own preservation, must insist upon
shouldering those proper responsibilities they too often have abandoned by default. The people will not let the
States sink into the insignificance of mere administrative suburbs if the great value and wisdom of local
government can be impressed upon them.

“The people’s highest interest,” said Upshur, “is at home; their palladium is their own State governments. They
ought to know that they can look nowhere else with perfect assurance of safety and protection. Let them then
maintain those governments, not only in their rights, but in their dignity and influence. Make it the interest of
their people to serve them: an interest strong enough to resist all the temptations of Federal office and patronage.
Then alone will the voice [of the States] be heard with respect at Washington; then alone will their interposition
avail to protect their own people against the usurpations of the great central power. It is vain to hope that the

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federative principle of our government can be preserved, or that any thing can prevent it from running into the
absolutism of consolidation, if we suffer the rights of the States to be filched away, and their dignity and
influence to be lost, through our carelessness or neglect.”

Thus Abel Parker Upshur ended his essay in 1840. And thus, well over a century later, this one ends also.

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 NOTES
Part 1. The Sovereign States

Section 1. The Beginnings

1. Jonathan Elliot (ed.), The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of
the Federal Constitution (Washington, 1836), III, 301.
2. Capitalization, punctuation, and spelling have been followed in this section as in
Charles E. Tansill (ed.), Documents Illustrating the Formation of the Union
Washington, 1927).
3. Paul Leicester Ford (ed.), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1882-99), V,
461.
4. Ware v. Hylton, 3 Dallas 199 (1796).
5. McIlvaine vs. Coxe’s Lessee, 4 Cranch 209, 212 (1808).
6. Sturges vs. Crowninshield, 4 Wheaton 122 (1819).
7. Graves, et al, vs. New York, ex rel O’Keefe, 306 U.S. 466, 488 (1939).
8.
James Brown Scott, Sovereign States and Suits Before Arbitral Tribunals and Courts of
Justice (New York, 1925), pp. 37ff.

Section 2. The State

9. Texas vs. White, 7 Wallace 700 (1869).
10. Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, 5 Peters 1 (1831).
11. Scott, Sovereign States, p. 18.
12. John Taylor, New Views on the Constitution (Washington, 1823), Section VIII.
13. See Cohens vs. Virginia; 6 Wheaton 264, “The people made the Constitution, and the
people can unmake it. It is a creature of their will and lives only by their will.” Then
Marshall fell into obvious error when he continued: “But this supreme and irresistible
power to make or to unmake resides only in the whole body of the people, not in any
subdivision of them.” The fallacy in this statement is made apparent by the merest
reading of Article V. The power to make or unmake does not lie in 51 per cent of the
people, or in any fraction of the whole body of the people. It lies in not fewer than
three-fourths of the States.
14. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Philadelphia, 1825) I, 33-
56.

Section 3. The Articles of Confederation

15. Penhallow vs. Doane, 3 Dallas 54, at 92-93 (1795).
16. The text here is from Tansill (ed.), Documents on the Formation of the Union, pp. 27-

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 37.
17. Interestingly enough, the Articles contained a clause that many a Postmaster General,
laboring against his postal deficit, must often wish had been retained in the Constitution
itself: The Congress was to exact “such postage on the papers passing through the same
as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office.” It is perhaps worth noting,
also, that Article Eleven provided for the admission of Canada into the Confederation,
should it wish to accede.

Section 4. “We the People”

18. John C. Calhoun, Reports and Public Letters, ed. Richard Crallé (New York, 1855), II,
231-32.
19. He really didn’t expect any.
20. Elliot, Debates, III, 28.
21. Ibid., p. 37.
22. Ibid., p. 94.
23. Ibid., p. 42.
24. Ibid., p. 29.

Section 5. The States in the Constitution

25. The rest of the paragraph has not been ignored; it will be quoted elsewhere.
26. This provision was not changed by the Seventeenth Amendment.
27. The Federalist, No. 43.
28. August O. Spain, The Political Theory of John C. Calhoun (New York, 1951), p. 195.
29. The word “nations” appears twice, in Article I, Section 8: once in authorizing Congress
to regulate commerce with foreign nations; again, in authorizing Congress to define and
punish offenses against the law of nations.
30. The Federalist, No. 33.
31. The Federalist, No. 78.

Section 6. The Prophetic Mr. Henry

32. The Federalist, No. 9.
33. The Federalist, No. 39.
34. The Federalist, No. 17.
35. The Federalist, No. 46.
36. The Federalist, No. 32.
37. McCulloch vs. Maryland, 4 Wheaton 316; 403 (1819).
38. The Supreme Court ultimately was to forget this, too. See United States vs. Butler, 297
U.S. 1 (1936).

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39. McCulloch vs. Maryland, 4 Wheaton 407.
40. David Robertson, Debates and Other Proceedings of the Convention of Virginia
(Richmond, 1805), p. 27.
41. Ibid., p. 32.
42. Elliot, Debates, III, 30.
43. Ibid., p. 40.
44. Ibid., p. 53-54.
45. Ibid., p. 87.
46. Ibid., p. 94.
47. Ibid., p. 107.
48. Ibid., p. 137.
49. Ibid., p. 156.
50. Ibid., p. 258.
51. Ibid., p. 301.
52. Ibid., p. 323.
53. Ibid., p. 563.
54. Ibid., p. 565.
55. Ibid., p. 521-522.
56. Ibid., p. 553.
57. Ibid., p. 555.

Section 7. The States Ratify

58. Albert J. Beveridge, The Life of John Marshall (Boston, 1916), I, 325.
59. Tansill (ed.), Documents on Formation of the Union, p. 1,018.
60. Ibid., p. 1,023.
61. Ibid., pp. 1,034-35.
62. Ibid., p. 1,037.
63. Ibid., p. 1,047.
64. Ibid., p. 1,052.
65. Ibid., p. 1,056.
66. United States vs. Sprague, 282 U.S. 716 (1931).
67. United States vs. Darby, 312 U.S. 100 (1941).
68. Ullman vs. United States, 24 L.W. 4147 (1956).

Page 174 of 210

 Part 2. The Right to Interpose

Section 1. A Cast of Characters

1. Beveridge, Marshall, I, 250-66.
2. Charles Warren, Jacobin and Junto (Cambridge, Mass., 1931), Introduction.

Section 2. The Chisolm Case

3. Georgia vs. Brailsford, 2 Dallas 402 (1792).
4. The Federalist, No. 81.
5. Hening, Statutes at Large, XIII, pp. 630-31.
6. Herman V. Ames, State Documents on Federal Relations (Philadelphia, 1911), p. 7.
7. Chisholm vs. Georgia, 2 Dallas 419 (1793).
8. Ames, State Documents, p. 9.
9. Ibid., p. 10.

Section 3. Debt Assumption

10. See Hollingsworth vs. Virginia, 3 Dallas 378 (1798).
11. Hening, Statutes at Large, XIII, 1790, pp. 238-39.
12. Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History (Boston, 1924), I, 63.
13. Ames, State Documents, pp. 11-13.
14. Ibid., p. 13.
15. Penhallow vs. Doane’s Administrators, 3 Dallas 54 (1795).

Section 4. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions

16. James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters (Ithaca, N.Y., 1956), p. 10.
17. John C. Miller, Crisis in Freedom (Boston, 1951), p. 7.
18. Ibid., p. 13.
19. Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, p. 283.
20. Burk fled to Amelia County, Virginia, where he became principal of a college, later
turned up in Petersburg, in time became an historian of some reputation, and ultimately
died in a duel with a Frenchman when he made the mistake—he was drunk at the
time—of denouncing all French as “a pack of rascals.”
21. Frederick Trevor Hill, Decisive Battles of the Law (New York, 1906), p. 4.
22. David Robertson, The Trial of James Robertson Callender (Petersburg, Va., 1804).
23. The sequel to the story is that Callender spent his time in jail writing fresh calumnies
against Adams in the form of a new book, which he offered for sale from the jail itself

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 at seventy-five cents a copy. In time, Jefferson contributed fifty dollars toward payment
of his fine, but the gesture gained Jefferson nothing. Callender turned on his benefactor,
charged him with fatherhood of the mulattoes at Monticello, and otherwise lived up to
Adams’ description of him as “not only a repulsive pedant, a gross hypocrite, and an
unprincipled oppressor, but . . . in private life, one of the most egregious fools upon the
continent.” (Miller, Crisis in Freedom, p. 217.) Callender died, a suicide, drunk, in July,
1803, when he waded into the James River and drowned himself.
24. Smith (Freedom’s Fetters, pp. 270-71) and Nathan Schachner in The Founding Fathers
(New York, 1954), p. 483, quote Baldwin as saying he did not care if the cannonball
went “through” the President’s arse, but this homely phrase hasn’t changed in one
hundred fifty years; the proper preposition is “up.”
25. Ethelbert Dudley Warfield, The Kentucky Resolution of 1798, an Historical Study (New
York, 1894), pp. 140 ff.
26. Ibid., p. 95.
27. The text quoted here, with inconsequential modifications in capitalization and
punctuation, is from Samuel Shepherd’s Statutes at Large of Virginia, December, 1798,
II, pp. 192-93.
28. As Taylor introduced the resolution, the Assembly would have declared the acts
“unconstitutional, and not law, but utterly null, void, and of no force or effect.” The
italicized language was eliminated, with Taylor’s consent, on December 21. He
regarded the words, as did Madison in his report in 1799, as surplusage. If an act were
unconstitutional, it followed inevitably, without the necessity of any recital, that it also
was null and void and of no force or effect.
29. Henry H. Simms, Life of John Taylor (Richmond, 1932), p. 3.
30. Russell Kirk, Randolph of Roanoke (Chicago, 1941), p. 53.
31. Simms, John Taylor, p. 210.
32. Beveridge, Marshall, II, 397.
33. The Virginia Report of 1799-1800, together with the Virginia Resolutions of December
21, 1798, the Debate and Proceedings Thereon (Richmond, 1850), p. 74.
34. Simms, John Taylor, p. 72.
35. Virginia Report, p. 112.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid., p. 113.
38. Ibid., p. 114.
39. Ibid., p. 59.
40. Text from William McDonald, Select Documents Illustrative of the History of the
United States, 1776-1861 (New York, 1899), pp. 158-60.

Section 5. Mr. Madison's Report of 1799

41. 41. See, for example, Madison’s letter of August, 1830, to Everett. It is fairly

Page 176 of 210

 representative of at least a dozen such letters he wrote, attempting to refute the very
arguments he had advanced in 1799.
42. United States vs. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936).
43. Ford (ed.), Writings of Jefferson, X, 141 (letter to Spencer Roane) and 199 (to James
Pleasants).
44. This was tried only once, in Ex parte McCardle, 6 Wallace 318 (1868).
45. The Federalist, No. 78.
46. The Federalist, No. 45.

Part 3. The States Fight Back

Section 1. The Olmstead Case

1. Annals of Congress, 11th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 2,254.
2. 131 U.S. Appndx. xxix-xxxiv.
3. Annals, 11th Congress, and Session, p. 2,261.
4. Penhallow vs. Doane, 3 Dallas 54 (1795).
5. Ross et al vs. Rittenhouse, 2 Dallas 163 (April term 1792).
6. Ames, State Documents, p. 12.
7. 3 Dallas 81-82.
8. 3 Dallas 90.
9. 3 Dallas 94.
10. United States vs. Judge Peters, 5 Cranch 136.
11. This account is taken largely from Thomas Lloyd, A Report of the Whole Trial of
General Michael Bright and others before Washington and Peters, in the Circuit Court
of the United States, in and for the District of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1809), and
from William H. Egle, An Illustrated History of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
(Harrisburg, 1876).
12. Ames, State Documents, p. 47.
13. Annals, 11th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 2,263.
14. Ames, State Documents, p. 48.
15. The Olmsted Case, Brightly’s Reports (Philadelphia, 1851), p. 14.
16. Acts of General Assembly of Virginia, 1809-10, p. 102.

Section 2. The Case of the Lands of Lord Fairfax

17. Warren, Supreme Court, I, 63.

Page 177 of 210

18. Dictionary of American Biography.
19. It reflects no great credit on Judge McKean that he had earlier appeared as a witness
against Cobbet in the same case.
20. Respublica vs. Cobbet, 3 Dallas 467.
21. No. 39.
22. Elliot, Debates, III, 94.
23. 15 Virginia 1.
24. Fairfax’s Devisee vs. Hunter’s Lessee, 7 Cranch 603 (1813).
25. Hunter vs. Martin’s Devisees, etc., 4 Munford 3.
26. Martin vs. Hunter, 1 Wheaton 304 (1816).

Section 3. The Embargo Crisis

27. Ames, State Documents, p. 26.
28. See, generally, Louis Martin Sears, Jefferson and the Embargo (Durham, N.C., 1927),
esp. pp. 170-86.
29. Beveridge, Marshall, IV, 15.
30. Ames, State Documents, p. 370.
31. Ibid., p. 28.
32. Ibid., p. 30.
33. Ibid., pp. 31-33.
34. Ibid., p. 34.
35. Ibid., p. 41.
36. Ibid., p. 41.
37. Ibid., pp. 43-44.

Section 4. The Matters of the Militia

38. Annals, April, 1910, p. 1,702.
39. Quoted by Beveridge, Marshall, p. 427.
40. William Edward Buckley, Notes on the Hartford Convention (New Haven, Conn.,
1934), p. 7.
41. Ames, State Documents, p. 58.
42. Ibid., p. 61.
43. Ibid., p. 64.

Section 5. Events of 1814

44. Ames, State Documents, pp. 71-72.

Page 178 of 210

45. Richard N. Current, Daniel Webster and the Rise of National Conservatism (Boston,
1955), p. 17.
46. Ames, State Documents, p. 76.

Section 6. The Hartford Convention

47. Current, Daniel Webster, p. 16.
48. Buckley, Hartford Convention, p. 7.
49. Ibid., p. 10.
50. Ibid., p. 19.
51. See Otis’ Letters in Defense of the Hartford Convention and the People of
Massachusetts (Boston, 1824).
52. Ibid., p. 16.

Section 7. The Bank of the United States

53. Ralph C. H. Catterall, The Second Bank of the United States (Chicago, 1903), p. 6.
54. Ibid., pp. 30 ff.
55. McCulloch was an interesting fellow. He started as a penniless clerk, but applied
himself so diligently to the arts of fraud that in time, by sheer industry, he managed to
embezzle nearly half a million dollars from the bank. In 1823 he was tried for
conspiracy to defraud, but strangely enough was acquitted. (Catterall, Second Bank, p,
79.)
56. Catterall, Second Bank, p. 69.
57. Ibid., p. 64.
58. 4 Wheaton 316.
59. Ibid., at 421-22.
60. Marshall actually was Adams’ second choice. The appointment first went to John Jay,
but Jay had no love for circuit riding and declined. Marshall was confirmed January 27,
1801, at the age of forty-five.
61. The quotation, and those that follow, are taken from Roane’s letters to the Richmond
Enquirer, over the signature of “Hampden,” as they are set forth in the John P. Branch
Historical Papers, Randolph-Macon College, Vol. I, pp. 357-73, and Vol. II, pp. 51-121.
62. Ibid., II, 56-57.
63. See Bank of United States vs. the Planters Bank of Georgia, 9 Wheaton 904 (1824).
64. Warren, Supreme Court, I, 528.
65. Catterall, Second Bank, p. 90.
66. These excerpts and those that follow are from Ames, State Documents, pp. 97-100.
67. Osborn et al vs. Bank of United States, 9 Wheaton 738, 869 (1824). Also see Warren,
Supreme Court, I, 534.

Page 179 of 210

68. Bank of United States vs. Deveaux et al, 5 Cranch 61, 87 (1809).
69. 9 Wheaton 845-46.
70. Branch Papers, II, 119.
71. Ames, State Documents, p. 113.
72. Catterall, Second Bank, pp. 340-43

Section 8. Internal Improvements

73. Ames, State Documents, p. 137.
74. Ibid., p. 139.
75. Jefferson to Madison, Dec. 24, 1825, Ford (ed.), Writings of Jefferson, X, 348.
76. Ibid., p. 350
77. Ibid., p. 301.
78. Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, ibid., p. 91, following Madison’s veto of an act for internal
improvements.
79. Madison, Letters and Other Writings (Philadelphia, 1865), III, 511-44.
80. Laws of Maryland, 1825-26, p. 236.

Section 9. Kentucky vs. the Court

81. Green et al vs. Biddle, 8 Wheaton 1 at 100 (1823).
82. Ibid., p. 102.
83. Ibid., pp. 12, 17.
84. Acts of Kentucky, 1821, pp. 456 ff.
85. 8 Wheaton 100.
86. Journal of the Senate of Kentucky, 1823, pp. 10-12.
87. Acts of Kentucky, 1823-24, pp. 488 ff.
88. Acts of Kentucky, 1824-25, pp. 520-52.
89. Ibid., p. 225.
90. Ibid., p. 233.
91. Bodley vs. Gaither, 3 T. B. Monroe’s Reports 58.
92. Niles Register, XXIX, 228, 229.
93. Ames, State Documents, p. 111.

Section 10. Georgia vs. the Court

94. Article 1, Section 10.
95. Fletcher vs. Peck, 6 Cranch 87 at 131 (1810).

Page 180 of 210

 96. H. von Holst, The Constitutional and Political History of the United States (Chicago,
1889). See also, generally, E. Merton Coulter, Short History of Georgia (Chapel Hill,
N. C., 1947).
97. Von Holst, Constitutional History, p. 446.
98. Ames, State Documents, p. 122.
99. Von Holst puts the date at December 28, but no matter; it was not a merry Christmas for
Mr. Tassels.
100. Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, 5 Peters 1 (1831).
101. Ibid., at 20.
102. Worcester vs. Georgia, 6 Peters 515 (1832).
103. All the students say Jackson never said this, but it certainly does sound like him.

Section 11. Calhoun and Nullification

104. I Statutes 24.
105. See Hampton and Company vs. United States, 276 U.S. 394 (1928).
106. Frederic Bancroft, Calhoun and the South Carolina Nullification Movement (Baltimore,
1928), p. 12.
107. Margaret L. Coit, John C. Calhoun, American Portrait (New York, 1950), p. 249.
108. Acts of South Carolina, 1825, p. 88.
109. Acts of Virginia, 1825-26, p. 114.
110. Acts of South Carolina, 1827-28, pp. 69-78.
111. Acts of Georgia, 1827, pp. 203-14.
112. Ames, State Documents, pp. 149-50.
113. Acts of Alabama, 1827-28, pp. 171-72.
114. Ames, State Documents, p. 152.
115. Coit, Calhoun, p. 181.
116. Ibid., pp. 177-91; and for a detailed account of Cooper’s trial, see Smith, Freedom’s
Fetters, pp. 307 ff.
117. Bancroft, Calhoun and Nullification, p. 39.
118. Calhoun, Reports and Public Letters, VI, 1-57.
119. Ames, State Documents, pp. 152-58.
120. Acts of Kentucky, 1829-30, pp. 287-300.
121. See Madison, Letters and Other Writings, Vol. IV, notably Madison’s letters to Edward
Everett, April, 1830, page 72; to Edward Livingston, May 8, 1830, page 80; to Joseph
C. Cabell, May 31, 1830, page 87; to Everett, August 1830 pages 95-106; to Cabell,
September, 1831, page 195; to Trist, December, 1831, pages 204-11, and 228; to C. E.
Haynes, August, 1832, page 224; to Andrew Stevenson, February, 1833, page 269; and

Page 181 of 210

 Madison’s memorandum on nullification (1835-36), pages 395-425. The trouble was
that Madison had done too good a job in 1799; he had reasoned himself to certain sound
conclusions then, and could not wiggle out of his argument thirty years later.
122. Ames, State Documents, pp. 164 ff.
123. Ibid.
124. Calhoun, Reports and Public Letters, VI, 144-93.
125. State Papers on Nullification (Boston, 1834), especially pp. 1-74.
126. Ironically enough, this act was first to be invoked against Ohio some years later, to
protect a U.S. Marshal seized by State officials in a fugitive slave case.
127. Even Bancroft, no nullifier, concedes this. (Calhoun and Nullification, p. 167.)

Section 12. A Case for Nullification

128. The point is ably argued in Calhoun’s Disquisition on Government; Works, I, 7 ff.
129. 136 U.S. 211.
130. Constitution of the United States of America, ed. Edward S. Corwin (Washington,
1953), p. 585.
131. United States vs. California, 332 U.S. 19 (1947); United States vs. Louisiana, 339 U.S.
699 (1950); and United States vs. Texas, 339 U.S. 707 (1950).
132. United States vs. Texas, 143 U.S. 621 (1892).
133. United States vs. Minnesota, 270 U.S. 181 (1926) and United States vs. Utah, 283 U.S.
64 (1931).
134. Littleton Tazewell Waller, Review of President Jackson’s Proclamation (Norfolk,
1888), p. 103.
135. Congressional Debates, 1829-30, pp. 269-70.
136. Quoted by Calhoun in the Fort Hill address.
137. An Exposition of the Virginia Resolution of 1798, by “Locke,” attributed to Abel Parker
Upshur (Philadelphia, 1833).

Section 13. Personal Liberty Laws

138. But it is. A certain carpetbagger by the name of Haldore Hanson (see Hearings of the
Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, 81st Congress,
pursuant to S. Res. 231, Part I, pages 73-83, and 241-71) not long ago wrote a piece for
the New Republic in which he deliberately made it appear that the author of these notes
sought to defend slavery.
139. Elliot, Debates, III, 82.
140. Ibid., pp. 269-70, 452.
141. Ibid., p. 270.
142. Statutes at Large, I, 302.

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143. Ames, State Documents, p. 195.
144. Ibid., p. 196.
145. Hillary A. Herbert, The Abolition Crusade and Its Consequences (New York, 1912), p.
58.
146. Georgia, outraged at Garrison, put up a $5,000 reward for his capture in an effort to try
him for violation of a State law against inflammatory material in the mails.
147. Resolutions of South Carolina, 1835; Ames, State Documents, pp. 216-17.
148. Message of Governor Troup of Georgia (1825), Ames, State Documents, p. 208.
149. Ames, State Documents, p. 206.
150. Warren, Supreme Court, II, 283.
151. Elkison vs. Deliesseline, 8 Federal Cases. No. 4366 (1823).
152. To the mild amusement of John Marshall. “Our brother Johnson,” he wrote Story, “I
perceive, has hung himself on a Democratic snag in a hedge composed entirely of
thorny State-rights in South Carolina, and will find some difficulty, I fear, in getting off
into smooth, open ground. . . . You have, it is said, some laws in Massachusetts not very
unlike in principles to that which our brother has declared unconstitutional. We have its
twin brother in Virginia; a case has been brought before me in which I might have
considered its constitutionality (The Brig Wilson, 1 Brock 423), had I chosen to do so;
but it was not absolutely necessary, and as I am not fond of butting against a wall in
sport, I escaped on the construction of the act.” (Warren, Supreme Court, II, 86.)
153. Acts of December 19, 1835.
154. Ames, State Documents, p. 238, and see reference cited.
155. Herbert, Abolition Crusade, pp. 9, 115.
156. For typical laws, see Massachusetts, Acts of 1843, P. 33; Pennsylvania, Acts of 1847, p.
206; and Rhode Island, Acts of 1848, p. 12.
157. Prigg vs. Pennsylvania, 16 Peters 539 (1842) was the most notable case.
158. Acts of Virginia, 1839-40, pp. 168-69.
159. Ibid., 1840-41, pp. 79-82.
160. Report of the Select Committee of the House of Delegates of Virginia on the
controversy with New York, 1840 (Richmond, 1841).
161. The act was later held null. See Warren, Supreme Court, II, 1445.
162. Except, oddly enough, as to Accomack County, on Virginia’s Eastern shore. (Acts of
Virginia, 1845).
163. Atticus had a long life; a citizen of Maine, visiting in Savannah in 1902, found him still
working around the docks, aged eighty-seven. A skilled shipcaulker, Atticus was valued
by his owners at $600 at the time of his trip to Maine.
164. Constitution, Article I, Section 10:3.
165. Much of this account has been put together from the various acts, resolutions, and
committee reports of the legislatures of Maine and Georgia from 1837 through 1840:

Page 183 of 210

 See also E. Merton Coulter, Short History of Georgia (Chapel Hill, 1933); an article, “A
Fugitive Slave Case in Maine,” by Harry S. Burrage, in Maine’s Historical Memorials,
August [?], 1922; and Historical Sketch and Roster of the Aroostook War 1839
(Augusta, 1904).
166. Laws of Connecticut, 1845, p. 21.
167. Laws of Maryland, 1844-45, P. Res. No. 25.
168. Laws of Ohio, 1844-45, P. 437.
169. Laws of Vermont, 1842, p. 97; 1843, P. 32; 1844, p. 28; 1845, p. 36; and 1846, p. 48.
Vermont was really upset about this thing.
170. Massachusetts, Acts and Resolutions, 1843, p. 68; see also 1844, p. 319.
171. Ibid., 1845, p. 598.
172. Prigg vs. Pennsylvania, 16 Peters 539 (1842). For an interesting discussion of
Pennsylvania’s reliance upon a right of “interposition,” see the argument of her attorney
general Johnson at 607.
173. Massachusetts, Acts, 1843, Chapter 69.
174. Kentucky vs. Dennison, 24 Howard 66 (1861).
175. Sandford later went insane and never figured in the case at all; see Warren, Supreme
Court, III, 3.
176. See, for example, Elbert William R. Ewing, Legal and Historical Status of the Dred
Scott Decision (Washington, 1909).
177. Edward S. Corwin, “The Dred Scott Decision in the Light of Contemporary Legal
Doctrine,” American Historical Review, XVII (1911), pp. 52 ff.
178. Warren, Supreme Court, III, pp. 38-39.
179. Warren’s compendium of newspaper comment in his chapter on the Dred Scott case is
enough to reduce the protests of Southern newspapers against the Supreme Court’s
school decree to the merest spring zephyrs; a number of Northern newspaper editors,
who so strenuously deplore “disrespect” for the Court, should read what their
predecessors had to say.
180. Resolves of the General Assembly of Vermont, October, 1858, pp. 67-68.
181. Resolutions of Maine, 1857, p. 6.
182. Massachusetts, Resolves, March 27, 1858.
183. 3 Wisconsin Reports 1.
184. Ableman vs. Booth, 21 Howard 506 (1859).
185. General Laws of Wisconsin, 1859, pp. 247-48.

Section 14. The Obligation of Contracts

186. Fletcher vs. Peck, 6 Cranch 87 (1810).
187. Trustees of Dartmouth College vs. Woodward, 4 Wheaton 518, 624 (1819).

Page 184 of 210

188. Providence Bank vs. Billings, 4 Peters 514 (1830).
189. Ogden vs. Saunders, 12 Wheaton 213 (1827). Bushrod Washington found it unsettling
to disagree with Marshall.
190. Mechanics and Traders Branch, etc., vs. Debolt, 1 Ohio State 591 (1853).
191. Ibid.
192. Knoop, Treasurer, etc., vs. Piqua Branch, 1 Ohio State 603 (1853).
193. Piqua Branch, etc., vs. Knoop, 16 Howard 369 (1854).
194. See Warren, Supreme Court, II, 524.
195. Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company vs. Debolt, 16 Howard 416 (1854).
196. Dodge vs. Woolsey, 18 Howard 331 (1856).
197. 7 Howard 1; 52 (1849). The case grew out of events in Rhode Island that led to Dorr’s
Rebellion in 1841-42. For an interesting discussion, see Warren, Supreme Court, II, 460
ff.
198. See State of Ohio vs. Moore, 5 Ohio State 444; Ross County Bank, etc., vs. Lewis, 5
Ohio State 447; and on an interesting corollary question, involving a newly levied State
tax on property of Ohio University which fifty years earlier had been “forever exempted
from all State taxes,” see Matheny vs. Golden, 5 Ohio State 361.
199. Sandusky City Bank vs. Wilbor, 7 Ohio State 481.
200. Skelly vs. Jefferson Bank, 9 Ohio State 606 (1859).
201. Jefferson Branch Bank vs. Shelly, 1 Black 436 (1862).
202. Some three hundred cases involving municipal bonds reached the Supreme Court in the
period immediately following the Civil War, more than half of them from Illinois and
Missouri; see Warren, Supreme Court, III, 254.
203. 1 Wallace 175 (1864).
204. Riggs vs. Johnson County, 6 Wallace 166, at 195, cited by Warren in an article,
“Federal and State Court Interference,” 43 Harvard Law Review, 345 at 378.
205. See Amy vs. Supervisors, 11 Wallace 136.
206. See New Orleans Waterworks vs. Louisiana Sugar Company, 125 U.S. 18 (1888). This
thirty-year fight over State impairment of contracts has probably been treated too
briefly here. For two significant cases, see Meyer vs. Muscatine, 1 Wallace 384, and
United States vs. Muscatine, 8 Wallace 575. See, too, Fred Rodell’s Nine Men (New
York, 1955), P. 153.

Section 15. After the War

207. Texas vs. White, 7 Wallace 700 (1869).
208. Knox vs. Lee, 12 Wallace 457 (1871).
209. Dean Alfange, The Supreme Court and the National Will (Garden City, N. Y., 1937), p.
88.

Page 185 of 210

210. Gray was an awesome fellow. He married at sixty-one, for the first time, and
interestingly enough, married a daughter of Judge Matthews. Gray was only four years
younger than his father-in-law, who sat down the bench from him. This has nothing to
do with State sovereignty.
211. He entered Columbia College at thirteen and was graduated at seventeen.
212. Marbury vs. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803), voiding a section of the judiciary act of
1789; Scott vs. Sandford, 19 Howard 393 (1857), describing the Missouri Compromise
as unconstitutional; Gordon vs. United States, 2 Wallace 561 (1865), dealing with
appeals from decisions of the Court of Claims; and Ex parte Garland, 4 Wallace 333
(1867), voiding an act of 1865 which undertook to disbar all attorneys who had served
in the Confederate cause.
213. On the very day Chase read his opinion in Hepburn vs. Griswold, 8 Wallace 603, Grant
sent to the Senate the nomination of Bradley and Strong, two justices who might be
expected to reverse the decision. Fifteen months later, they did exactly that.
214. United States vs. Dewitt, 9 Wallace 41 (1870).
215. Justices vs. Murray, 9 Wallace 274 (1870).
216. Five per cent on incomes above $1,000. Them were the days.
217. Collector vs. Day, 11 Wallace 113 (1871).
218. Dobbins vs. Commissioners of Erie County, 16 Peters 435 (1842).
219. This held good until expressly overruled in 1939, Graves vs. O’Keefe, 306 U.S. 466
(1939).
220. United States vs. Klein, 13 Wallace 128 (1872).
221. Tarble’s Case, 13 Wallace 397 (1872).
222. 9 Wallace 579 (1870).
223. 16 Wallace 479 (1873).
224. Bradwell vs. The State, 16 Wallace 130 (1873). That the Court was a little unsettled by
Mrs. Bradwell’s petition may be judged by the fact that Miller wrote the Court’s
opinion. Bradley wrote a separate opinion (“The natural and proper timidity and
delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occasions
of civil life. . . . The harmony, not to say the identity, of interests and views which
belong, or should belong, to the family institution, is repugnant to the idea of a woman
adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her husband”). Swayne and
Field concurred with Bradley. Chief Justice Chase dissented from the judgment of the
Court, and from all the opinions.
225. Hurtado vs. California, 110 U.S. 516 (1884).
226. Powell vs. Pennsylvania, 127 U.S. 678 (1888).
227. Bartemeyer vs. Iowa, 18 Wallace 129 (1874), and Mugler vs. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623
(1887).
228. Stone vs. Farmers Loan and Trust Company, 116 U.S. 307 (1886).

Page 186 of 210

 Section 16. The Reconstruction Cases
229. 16 Wallace 36 (1873).
230. Warren, Supreme Court, III, 257.
231. Ibid., p. 268.
232. 92 U.S. 214.
233. Ibid., at 542.
234. 106 U.S. 629 (1883).
235. 113 U.S. 27 (1885).
236. New York vs. Miln, 11 Peters 102 (1837). The opinion did not last very long.
237. Charles River Co. vs. Warren Bridge Co., 11 Peters 420 (1837).

Section 17. The Commerce Clause (Commenced)

238. See Munn vs. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113 (1877); also at 155 and 180. California also fared
well, for a time, in combat with the railroads.
239. Beer Company vs. Massachusetts, 97 U.S. 25, and Stone vs. Mississippi, 101 U.S. 814
(1880).
240. See Henderson vs. New York, 92 U.S. 259 (1876); Chy Lung vs. Freeman, 92 U.S. 275
(1876); California vs. Central Pacific Railroad, 127 U.S. 1 (1888); and, as to currency,
Juilliard vs. Greenman, 110 U.S. 421 (1884).
241. Hammer vs. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251, at 269 (1918).
242. United States vs. Darby, 312 U.S. at 116 (1941). Much earlier, of course, this concept
had been felt out in an act forbidding interstate slave trade. Groves vs. Slaughter, 15
Peters 449 (1841).
243. Appalachian Coals, Inc., vs. United States, 288 U.S. 344, 372 (1933).
244. Henderson vs. New York, 92 U.S. 259 (1876).
245. Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railway Company vs. Illinois, 118 U.S. 557 (1886).
246. See Warren, Supreme Court, III, 419. The case was Leisy and Company vs. Hardin, 135
U.S. 100 (1890).
247. Kidd vs. Pearson, 128 U.S. 1 (1888).
248. United States vs. E. C. Knight Company, 156 U.S. 1 (1895).
249. Pollock vs. Farmers Loan and Trust Company, 158 U.S. 601 (1895).
250. 3 Dallas 171 (1796).
251. Alfange, The Supreme Court and the National Will, quoting Charles and Mary Beard.
252. In re Debs, 158 U.S. 564 (1895).
253. Reagan vs. Farmers Loan and Trust Company, 154 U.S. 362 (1894), and Baltimore and
Ohio Railroad vs. Baugh, 149 U.S. 368 (1893).

Page 187 of 210

254. United States vs. Gettysburg Electric Railway Company, 160 U.S. 668 (1896).
255. Adair vs. United States, 208 U.S. 161 (1908). This was the start of the circle that came
full in 1956 in the Hanson Case. From ruling that a railroad had a right not to hire union
men, the Court came in time to rule that a railroad had no right to hire non-union men.
256. Champion vs. Ames, 188 U.S. 321 (1903).
257. Hippolite Egg Company vs. United States, 220 U.S. 45.
258. United States vs. Jin Fuey May, 241 U.S. 394.
259. Hoke vs. United States, 227 U.S. 308 (1913). The Court extended its ban even to an
indignant polygamist, peacefully transporting his wives not for public profit, but for
private enjoyment. Cleveland vs. United States, 329 U.S. 14 (1946).
260. Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908).
261. Ibid., at 125.
262. Houston Electric and Water Company vs. United States, 234 U.S. 342 (1914).
263. United States vs. Chandler-Dunbar Company, 229 U.S. 53 (1913); and see also Arizona
vs. California, 283 U.S. 423 (1931); Ashwander vs. TVA, 297 U.S. 288 (1936); and
United States vs. Appalachian Electric Power Company, 311 U.S. 377 (1940).
264. United States vs. Ohio Oil Company, 234 U.S. 548; see also Oklahoma vs. Kansas
Natural Gas Company, 221 U.S. 229; Eureka Pipe Line Company vs. Hallanan, 257
U.S. 265; United Fuel Gas Company vs. Hallanan, 257 U.S. 277; Missouri ex rel
Barrett vs. Kansas Natural Gas Company, 265 U.S. 298; Federal Power Commission
vs. National Gas Pipeline Company, 315 U.S. 575, in which Federal authority was
asserted over the prices at which natural gas could be sold to distribution companies);
Colorado-Wyoming Company vs. Commission, 324 U.S. 626; Cities Service Company
vs. Peerless Company, 340 U.S. 179; and finally, of course, the famed Phillips Case
(347 U.S. 672), which overturned the Peerless Company Case and asserted Federal
authority over the price on gas at the wellhead. These are merely guidepost cases, but
they are representative of the engulfing trend of Federal domination of an entire
industry.
265. Hammer vs. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918).
266. Stafford vs. Wallace, 258 U.S. 495 (1922).
267. Chicago Board of Trade vs. Olsen, 262 U.S. 1 (1923).

Section 18. Interlude in a Speakeasy

268. Address by Senator A. Willis Robertson of Virginia in the Senate, March 23, 1956.
269. Rhode Island vs. Palmer, 253 U.S. 350 (1920).
270. Archibald E. Stevenson, States Rights and National Prohibition (New York, 1927).
271. Ibid., p. 6.
272. Ibid.

Section 19. The Commerce Clause (Continued)

Page 188 of 210

273. A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corporation vs. United States, 295 U.S. 495, 528 (1935).
274. Ibid., at 553.
275. United States vs. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936).
276. Ibid., at 77.
277. Ibid., at 64-66.
278. 298 U.S. 238 at 291.
279. Ibid., at 295-96.
280. Owen J. Roberts, The Court and the Constitution (Cambridge, Mass., 1951), p. 49.
281. NLRB vs. Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation, 301 U.S. 1. See also NLRB vs.
Friedman-Harry Marks, 301 U.S. 58, and NLRB vs. Fruehauf Trailer Company, 301
U.S. 49, all decided the same day.
282. Charles C. Steward Machine Company vs. Davis, 301 U.S. 548, at 599 (1937).
283. Ibid., at 616.
284. 312 U.S. 100, at 124 (1941).
285. Roberts, The Court and the Constitution, p. 56.
286. United States vs. Wrightwood Dairy Company, 315 U.S. 110, at 118-119 (1942).
287. Wickard vs. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942).

Part 4. The States Today

Section 1. The Southern States

1. Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, 347 U.S. 483
(1954).
2. Missouri ex rel Games vs. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938).
3. McLaurin vs. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950).
4. Sweatt vs. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950).

Section 2. Some Notes on the Fourteenth Amendment

5. See, for example, Horace E. Flack’s “The Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment,”
Johns Hopkins Studies (Baltimore, 1908); Joseph F. Ingham’s “Unconstitutional
Amendments,” Dickinson Law Review XXXIII (March, 1929), 161-68; and Walter J.
Suthon’s “The Dubious Origin of the Fourteenth Amendment,” Tulane Law Review,
XVIII (December, 1953), 22-24.
6. Joseph B. James, The Forming of the Fourteenth Amendment (Urbana, Ill., 1956), pp.
37-38.
7. Ibid., p. 155.

Page 189 of 210

 8. Georgia vs. Stanton, 6 Wallace 50 (1868).
9. Ex parte McCardle, 6 Wallace 318 (1868).
10. Coleman vs. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939).
11. Walton H. Hamilton, “Constitutionalism,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New
York, 1937), IV, 255.
12. Congressional Globe, 39th Congress, 1st Session (1866), p. 211.
13. Ibid., p. 500.
14. Ibid., p. 475.
15. Ibid., p. 1,117.
16. Ibid., pp. 806, 813.
17. Ibid., p. 2,467.
18. Ibid., p. 2,459.
19. James, Fourteenth Amendment, pp. 29-30.
20. Ibid., p. 30.
21. See comments of Boyer and Broomall, Congressional Globe, 39th Congress, 1st
Session, pp. 2,467 and 2,498.
22. Ibid., p. 3,144.
23. James, Fourteenth Amendment, p. 163.
24. Ibid., p. 167.
25. Ibid., p. 180,
26. 14 Statutes at Large 343; see also 13. Statutes 191.
27. Message, 1867.
28. Kansas, General Statutes (1868), Chapter 18.
29. Report of Commission of Common Schools of Ohio (1867), p. 477, Table B.
30. 163 U.S. 537; 544 (1896).
31. Cumming vs. Board of Education, 175 U.S. 528 (1899).
32. 275 U.S. 78; 86 (1927).
33. West Coast Hotel vs. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 at 403 (1937).
34. Carter vs. Carter Coal Company, 298 U.S. 238 (1936).
35. See Calhoun’s Fort Hill Address.
36. Address of Chief Justice Walter Clark, of the North Carolina Supreme Court, Cooper
Union, New York City, January 27, 1914 (2nd Edition), pp. 10-11.
37. 281 U.S. 586, at 595 (1930).
38. Adamson vs. California, 332 U.S. 46 (1947).
39. 346 U.S. 249 (1953).

Page 190 of 210

40. William O. Douglas, “Stare Decisis,” 49 Columbia Law Review.
41. Letter to Thomas Ritchie (1820), Ford (ed.), Writings of Jefferson, X, 170.
42. Smith vs. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944). For a tabulation of Court reversals, see
Brandeis’ dissenting opinion in Burnet vs. Coronado Oil and Gas Company, 285 U.S.
393, at 406-07 (1932); also the Douglas article previously cited, and a tabulation in the
Congressional Record, June 18, 1953, at 7,090.
43. Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 2nd Session (1872), p. 3,189.

Section 3. Some Notes on Police Power

44. Constitutional Limitations (6th Ed.), p. 704, quoted in People vs. Bray, 105 California
344.
45. Thomas Cooley, The General Principles of Constitutional Law (Boston, 1880), p. 49.
See Barbier vs. Connolly, 113 U.S. 27 (1885).
46. State vs. Mamlock, 109 Pacific 47, quoting from State vs. Wise, 70 Minnesota 99.

Section 4. The Transcendent Issue

47. United States vs. California, 332 U.S. 19 (1947).
48. Ibid., at 43.
49. Ibid., at 44.
50. United States vs. Louisiana, 339 U.S. 699 (1950).
51. United States vs. Texas, 339 U.S. 707, 724 (1950).
52. 346 U.S. 485.
53. 348 U.S. 61.
54. Pennsylvania vs. Nelson, 24 L.W. 4165.
55. 24 L.W. 4209.
56. 347 U.S. 672.
57. Slochower vs. Board of Higher Education, etc., 24 L.W. 4178.
58. Railway Employees’ Department, etc., vs. Hanson, 24 L.W. 4251, at 4253.
59. Brief Inquiry into the Nature and Character of the Federal Government (Petersburg,
Va., 1840), p. 130.
60. Williams vs. Georgia, 348 U.S. 854; Williams vs. State, 211 Ga. 763.

Page 191 of 210

THE SOVEREIGN STATES
Notes of a Citizen of Virginia
by James Jackson Kilpatrick

TABLE OF CASES
Ableman vs. Booth, 2 Howard 506 (1859), 214
Adair vs. United States, 208 U.S. 161 (1908), 239
Adamson vs. California, 332 U.S. 46 (1947), 274, 275
Amy vs. Supervisors, 11 Wallace 136 (1870), 222
Appalachian Coals, Inc. vs. United States, 288 U.S. 344 (1933), 236
Arizona vs. California, 283 U.S. 423 (1931), 240n
Ashwander vs. TVA, 297 U.S. 288 (1936), 240
Baldwin vs. Missouri, 281 U.S. 586 (1930), 274
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad vs. Baugh, 149 U.S. 368 (1893), 238
Bank of the United States vs. Deveaux, 5 Cranch 61 (1809), 155
Bank of the United States vs. Planters Bank of Georgia, 9 Wheaton 904 (1824), 151n
Barbier vs. Connolly, 113 U.S. 27 (1885), 233, 282n
Barrows vs. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249 (1953), 275
Bartemeyer vs. Iowa, 18 Wallace 129 (1874), 231
Beer Company vs. Massachusetts, 97 U.S. 25 (1877), 235
Bodley vs. Gaither, 3 T. B. Monroe’s Reports 58 (1825), 166
Bradwell vs. The State, 16 Wallace 130 (1873), 231
Brig Wilson, The, 1 Brock 423 (1820), 203n
Brown vs. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), 255
Burnet vs. Coronado Oil & Gas Co., 285 U.S. 393 (1932), 277n
California vs. Central Pacific Railroad, 127 U.S. 1 (1888), 235n
Carter vs. Carter Coal Co., 298 U.S. 238 (1936), 272
[ Castle vs. Hayes Freight Lines, 348 U.S. 61 (1954) ]
Champion vs. Ames, 188 U.S. 321 (1903), 239
Charles River Bridge Co. vs. Warren Bridge Co., 11 Peters 420 (1837), 234

Page 192 of 210

Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, 5 Peters 1 (1831), 8, 172-173
Chicago Board of Trade vs. Olsen, 262 U.S. 1 (1923), 241
Chisholm vs. Georgia, 2 Dallas 419 (1793), 55-58
Chy Lung vs. Freeman, 92 U.S. 275 (1876), 235n
Cities Service Co. vs. Peerless Co., 340 U.S. 179 (1950), 240n
Cleveland vs. United States, 329 U.S. 14 (1946), 239n
Cohens vs. Virginia, 6 Wheaton 264 (1821), 9n
Collector vs. Day, 11 Wallace 113 (1871), 229
Coleman vs. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, (1939), 261
Colorado-Wyoming Co. vs. Commission, 324 U.S. 626 (1945), 240n
Cumming vs. Board of Education, 175 U.S. 528 (1899), 271
Dartmouth College vs. Woodward, 4 Wheaton 518 (1819), 216
Debs, In re, 158 U.S. 564 (1895), 238
Dobbins vs. Commissioners of Erie County, 16 Peters 435 (1842), 229
Dodge vs. Woolsey, 18 Howard 331 (1856), 219
Elkison vs. Deliesseline, 8 Federal Cases No. 4366 (1823), 203
Eureka Pipe Line Co. vs. Hallanan, 257 U.S. 265 (1921), 240n
Fairfax’s Devisee vs. Hunter’s Lessee, 7 Cranch 603 (1813), 121
Federal Power Commission vs. National Gas Pipeline Co., 315 U.S. 575 (1942), 240n
Fletcher vs. Peck, 6 Cranch 87 (1810), 153, 168-169, 216
Garner, et al, vs. Teamsters Union, 346 U.S. 485 (1953), 292-293
Garland, ex parte, 4 Wallace 333 (1867), 228n
Georgia vs. Stanton, 6 Wallace 50 (1868), 261
Gordon vs. United States, 2 Wallace 561 (1865), 228n
Gelpcke vs. Dubuque, 1 Wallace 175 (1864), 221
Georgia vs. Brailsford, 2 Dallas 402 (1792), 54
Gong Lum vs. Rice, 275 U.S. 78 (1927), 271-272
Graves vs. O’Keefe, 306 U.S. 466 (1939), 6, 229
Green et al vs. Biddle, 8 Wheaton 1 (1823), 162-163
Griffin vs. Illinois, 24 L.W. 4209 (1956). 296-299
Groves vs. Slaughter, 15 Peters 449 (1841), 236
Hammer vs. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918), 236, 240
Hampton & Co. vs. the United States, 276 U.S. 394 (1928), 174n
Henderson vs. New York, 92 U.S. 259 (1876), 235n, 236

Page 193 of 210

Hepburn vs. Griswold, 8 Wallace 603 (1870), 228-229
Hippolite Egg Co. vs. United States, 220 U.S. 45 (1910), 239
Hoke vs. United States, 227 U.S. 308 (1913) 239
Hunter vs. Martin’s Devisees, etc., 4 Munford 3 (1815), 121-125
Hurtado vs. California, 110 U.S. 516 (1884), 231
Hollingsworth vs. Virginia, 3 Dallas 378 (1798), 10n
Houston Electric and Water Co. vs. United States, 234 U.S. 342 (1914), 240
Hylton vs. United States, 3 Dallas 171 (1796), 237
Jefferson Branch Bank vs. Skelly, 1 Black 436 (1862), 201
Juilliard vs. Greenman, 110 U.S. 421 (1884), 235n
Justices vs. Murray, 9 Wallace 274 (1870), 229
Kentucky vs. Dennison, 24 Howard 66 (1861), 210
Kidd vs. Pearson, 128 U.S. 1 (1888), 237
Knoop, Treasurer, etc., vs. Piqua Branch Bank, 1 Ohio State 603 (1853), 217
Knox vs. Lee, 12 Wallace 457 (1871), 222
Leisy and Co. vs. Hardin, 135 U.S. 100 (1890), 236
Luther vs. Borden, 7 Howard 1 (1849), 220
Marbury vs. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 (1803), 153, 228n
Martin vs. Hunter, 1 Wheaton 304 (1816), 125
Matheny vs. Golden, 5 Ohio State 361 (1856), 220n
McCardle, ex parte, 6 Wallace 318 (1868), 92n
McCulloch vs. Maryland, 4 Wheaton 316 (1819), 32-33, 34, 145, 251
McIlvaine vs. Coxe�s Lessee, 4 Cranch 209 (1808), 6
McLaurin vs. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950), 256
Mechanics & Traders Branch Bank, etc., vs. Debolt, 1 Ohio State 591 (1853), 217
Missouri ex. rel. Barrett vs. Kansas Natural Gas Co., 265 U.S. 298 (1924), 240n
Missouri ex. rel. Gaines vs. Canada, 305 U.S. 337 (1938), 256
Mugler vs. Kansas, 123 U.S. 623 (1887), 231
Munn vs. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113 (1877), 235
Meyer vs. City of Muscatine, 1 Wallace 384 (1863), 222n
New Orleans Waterworks vs. Louisiana Sugar Company, 125 U.S. 18 (1888), 222n
NLRB vs. Friedman-Harry Marks, 301 U.S. 58 (1937), 249-250
NLRB vs. Fruehauf Trailer Co., 301 U.S. 49 (1937), 249-250
NLRB vs. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, 301 U.S. 1 (1937), 249-250

Page 194 of 210

New York vs. Miln, 11 Peters 102 (1837), 234, 236
Ogden vs. Saunders, 12 Wheaton 213 (1827), 216
State of Ohio vs. Moore, 5 Ohio State 444 (1856), 220n
Ohio Life Insurance & Trust Co. vs. Debolt, 16 Howard 416 (1854), 219
Oklahoma vs. Kansas Natural Gas Co., 221 U.S. 229 (1911), 240n
Olmstead Case, The, Brightley’s Reports (Philadelphia 1851) 14, 116
Osborn et al vs. Bank of the United States, 9 Wheaton 738 (1824), 155, 156
Osborne vs. Mobile, 16 Wallace 479 (1873), 231
Penhallow vs. Doane, 3 Dallas 54 (1795), 11, 62, 105n
Pennsylvania vs. Nelson, 24 L.W. 4165 (1956), 294-296
Phillips Petroleum Co. vs. Wisconsin, 347 U.S. 672 (1953), 240n, 299-300
Piqua Branch Bank, etc., vs. Knoop, 16 Howard 369 (1854), 218
Plessy vs. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), 271
Pollock vs. Farmers Loan & Trust Co., 158 U.S. 601 (1895), 237
Powell vs. Pennsylvania, 127 U.S. 678 (1888), 231
Prigg vs. Pennsylvania, 16 Peters 539 (1842), 204, 209
Providence Bank vs. Billings, 4 Peters 514 (1830), 216
Railway Employees Dept., etc., vs. Hanson, 24 L.W. 4251 (1956), 302-304
Reagan vs. Farmers Loan & Trust Co., 154 U.S. 362 (1894), 238
Respublica vs. Cobbet, 3 Dallas 467 (1798), 119-120
Rhode Island vs. Palmer, 253 U.S. 350 (1920), 242
Riggs vs. Johnson County, 6 Wallace 166 (1867), 221
Ross et al vs. Rittenhouse, 2 Dallas 163 (1792), 105
Ross County Bank, etc., vs. Lewis, 5 Ohio State 447 (1856), 220n
Sandusky City Bank vs. Wilbor, 7 Ohio State 481 (1857), 220
Schecter Poultry Corp. vs. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935), 245
Scott vs. Sandford, 19 Howard 393 (1857), 210-212, 228n
Skelly vs. Jefferson Bank, 9 Ohio State 606 (1859), 221
Slaughterhouse Cases, 16 Wallace 36 (1873), 231-232
Slochower vs. Board of Higher Education, 24 L.W. 4178 (1956), 300-302
Smith vs. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1945), 277
Stafford vs. WallaceStafford vs. Wallace, 258 U.S. 495 (1922), 241
State vs. Mamlock, 109 Pacific 47 (1910), 283
State vs. Wise, 70 Minnesota 99 (1897), 283

Page 195 of 210

Steward Machine Co. vs. Davis, 301 U.S. 548 (1937), 250
Stone vs. Farmers Loan & Trust Co., 116 U.S. 307 (1886), 231
Stone vs. Mississippi, 101 U.S. 814 (1880), 235
Sturges vs. Crowninshield, 4 Wheaton 122 (1819), 6
Sweatt vs. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950), 256
Tarble’s Case, 13 Wallace 397 (1872), 230
Texas vs. White, 7 Wallace 700 (1869), 8, 222
Thomson vs. Union Pacific Railroad, 9 Wallace 579 (1870), 231
Ullman vs. United States, 24 L.W. 4147 (1956), 47
United Fuel Gas Co. vs. Hallanan, 257 U.S. 277 (1921), 240n
United States vs. Appalachian Electric Power Co., 311 U.S. 377 (1940), 240n
United States vs. Butler, 297 U.S. 1 (1936), 34n, 92n, 246-247
United States vs. California, 332 U.S. 19 (1947), 192, 287-290
United States vs. Chandler-Dunbar Co., 229 U.S. 53 (1913), 240
United States vs. Darby, 312 U.S. 100 (1941), 47, 236, 250
United States vs. Dewitt, 9 Wallace 41 (1870), 229
United States vs. Gettysburg Electric Railway Co., 160 U.S. 668 (1896), 238
United States vs. Harris, 106 U.S. 629 (1883), 233
United States vs. Jim Fuey Moy, 241 U.S. 394 (1916), 239
United States vs. Klein, 13 Wallace 128 (1872), 230
United States vs. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U.S. 1 (1895), 237
United States vs. Louisiana, 339 U.S. 699 (1950), 192, 290
United States vs. Minnesota, 270 U.S. 181 (1926), 192
United States vs. Muscatine, 8 Wallace 575 (1869), 222n
United States vs. Judge Peters, 5 Cranch 115 (1809), 109
[ United States vs. North Carolina 136 U.S. 211 (1890) ]
United States vs. Ohio Oil Company, 234 U.S. 548 (1914), 240
[ United States vs. Reese, 92 U.S. 214 (1875) ]
United States vs. Sprague, 282 U.S. 716 (1931), 46, 47
United States vs. Texas, 143 U.S. 621 (1892), 192
United States vs. Texas, 339 U.S. 707 (1950), 290-291
United States vs. Utah, 283 U.S. 64 (1931), 192
United States vs. Wrightwood Dairy Co., 315 U.S. 110 (1942), 251
Wabash, St. Louis, and Pacific Railway Co. vs. Illinois, 118 U.S. 557 (1886), 236

Page 196 of 210

Ware vs. Hylton, 3 Dallas 199 (1796), 6
West Coast Hotel vs. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 (1937), 272
Wickard vs. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), 251
Williams vs. Georgia, 348 U.S. 854 (1954), 306
Williams vs. State, 211 Georgia 763 (1954), 306
Worcester vs. Georgia, 6 Peters 515 (1832), 173
Young, Ex Parte, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), 239-240

NOTE: Cases in brackets are not listed in the original work.

Page 197 of 210

 THE SOVEREIGN STATES
Notes of a Citizen of Virginia
by James Jackson Kilpatrick

INDEX

Ableman, United States Marshal: in Wisconsin case, 213-214

Adair, John, Governor of Kentucky: denounces Supreme Court in land controversy, 164
Adams, John: role in Alien-Sedition affair, 63; attacked by editors, 67-69
Agricultural Adjustment Act, 245-246
Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act, 251
Alabama: resists protective tariff, 176; adopts act as to Negro Seamen, 203; legislature of, denounces judicial
legislation, 305
Alien Enemies Act (of 1798), 64
Alien Friends Act of 1798, 65
Arkansas: feuds with Ohio as to fugitive slaves, 209; approves doctrine of interposition, 306
Arnold, Benedict, 104
Articles of Confederation: provisions reviewed, 10-13

Bache, Benjamin: edited Aurora in Philadelphia, 1798, 67-68

Bachelder, General George W.: commands troops in Maine, 208
Baldwin, Luther: arrested and tried for sedition, 70
Bank of the United States: protected from State taxation in McCulloch case, 33; in conflict with States, 47-
51; 144-158
Barbour, James: on Virginia Resolution, 83-84; quarrel with Georgia, 170
Beecher, Henry Ward, 268
Beveridge, Albert J.: sneered at State sovereignty, 10
Bill of Rights, 46. See Constitution of United States
Black, Justice Hugo: on limitations of Supreme Court, 274; in Tidelands case, 287 ff; upholds Federal
control of trucking industry, 293; on Illinois proceedings for judicial review, 296-297
Bituminous Coal Conservation Act, 247-248
Blatchford, Justice Samuel: named to Supreme Court, 228
Booth, Sherman M.: Wisconsin editor in fugitive slave case, 213-214
Bradley, Justice Joseph P.: on right of secession, 222; named to Supreme Court, 227

Page 198 of 210

Breckinridge, John: sponsors Kentucky resolution of 1798, 71
Brewster, Owen, 243
Bright, Michael, General: commander of Pennsylvania militia protecting defendants in Olmstead case, 110-
113
Brooke, Justice Francis T.: protests United States action in Fairfax lands case, 124
Brown, David: sentenced under Sedition Act, 70
Bryan, William Jennings: attacks Supreme Court in income tax case, 237-238
Burk, John Daly: edited New York Time Piece, sentenced under Sedition Act, 68
Butler, Elizur: figures in Georgia controversy, 173
Butler, Justice Harold O.: dissents in sedition case, 295; on judicial review in Illinois, 298; in Natural Gas
case, 299; dissents in Slochower case, 301
Butler, Justice Pierce: objects to Federal control of labor relations, 249

Cabell, Judge William H., 121-124

Calhoun, John C.: on sovereignty, 14; supports Second Bank of the United States, 145; his role in
nullification crisis, 57-61; his doctrine of nullification reviewed, 185-199
California: in Tidelands case, 287-292
Callender, James Thompson, 68
Campbell, Justice John A., 218
Cardozo, Justice Benjamin N.: on National Industrial Recovery Act, 245; on Social Security, 249-250
Castle, Latham (attorney general of Illinois), 293-294
Catron, Justice John, 218
Chaffee, C. C., 210-211
Chase, Chief Justice Salmon P.: on State sovereignty, 8, 222; named to Supreme Court, 227; in Tarbles
case, 230-231
Chase, Justice Samuel: on sovereignty, 5-6; enforces Sedition Act, 68-69
Child Labor Law, 240-241
Cherokee Indians, 171-173
Chesapeake Affair, 126
Chisholm, Alexander, 52, 53-58
Chittenden, Martin (Governor of Vermont), 135
Civil Rights: Reconstruction cases affecting, 233; acts in Congress, 264, 266; construed by Supreme Court as
to schools, 255-256, 271-272
Clark, Justice Tom: in natural gas case, 299; in Slochower case, 301
Clay, Henry: in Kentucky land controversy, 163; as conciliator in tariff dispute, 185
Clifford, Justice Nathan, 226
Cobbet, William, 119-120
Congress: term employed in Declaration of Independence, 5; under Articles of Confederation, 12-13;

Page 199 of 210

membership and powers under Constitution, 20-23; certain acts of, held unconstitutional by Supreme Court,
228
Connecticut: ratifies Constitution, 43; regrets Virginia Resolution, 84; denounces Embargo Acts, 130-131;
denounces War of 1812 and refuses troops, 134-135; enacts State law to nullify Conscription Act, 139;
accepts invitation to Hartford Convention, 140; harasses Bank of the United States, 157; criticizes Georgia in
Cherokee case, 173; opposes nullification movement in South Carolina, 180; opposes annexation of Texas,
208; adopts Personal Liberty Law, 209; opposes 18th Amendment, 242
Conscription: Act of 1814 resisted by Massachusetts and Connecticut, 139
Constitution of the United States: genesis in Articles of Confederation, 10-13; general provisions as to
States, 18-28; speaks of United States always in plural, 20-21; compact theory of, asserted (by Rhode Island)
131, (by Kentucky) 71, 72, 74, 84-85, (by Virginia) 77, 86-89, 179-180, (by Calhoun) 187-188; termed only
source of Federal power, 116, 149, 229, 248; checks and balances in, 36, 39-40, 91-94; limitations on Federal
powers, 29-32, 33, 38-39, 41, 72, 77, 84-85; ratified by States, 17, 18, 27, 34, 42-46
–Preamble—debated in Virginia 15-16, in Philadelphia 17-18
–Article I: legislative powers, 20-21; sanctioned slavery, 200-201; general welfare clause, 11, 47, 246;
commerce clause, 234-241, 244-251, see Natural Gas Act, railroads, etc.; militia, 21, 26, 133, 136, 139-141,
143; necessary or proper clause expounded (by Marshall) 146, (by Roane) 148; impairment of contracts, in
Kentucky-Virginia dispute 162-163, in Ohio bank taxation controversy 216-221, as to State bonds 221-222
–Article II: executive powers, 22-23
–Article III: judicial powers, defined, 23; debated in Virginia, 40-42; limit on sought by New York, 45;
challenged in Chisholm case, 53�ff; construed by Virginia 55, in Kentucky 75, by Hamilton 93-94; Supreme
Courts authority as arbiter in State-Federal conflicts disputed 71-72, 82-83, 88-90, 117-118, 120, 122, 150,
152-154, 156, 157, 171, 180, 191-193, 194, 219-220; Judiciary Act of 1789, 121-122, 124
–Article IV: extradition of fugitives, 24, 199-215 passim
–Article V: amendatory process defined, 24-25; expounded by John Taylor of Caroline, 82; court itself
cannot amend, 272
–Article VI: supreme law of the land, 25-26, 27, 273
–Article VII: ratification, 17, 18, 27, 42-46
–First Amendment, 65-66, 78
–Fifth Amendment, 200-302
–Tenth Amendment: genesis in Articles of Confederation, 11; Madison on, 29, 86; demanded by Virginia,
43; by Massachusetts 44, by South Carolina 44, by New Hampshire 44, by New York 44-45, by North
Carolina 45, by Rhode Island 45-46; ratified, 46; decline of, 46-47; expounded by Virginia Supreme Court,
122; Calhoun on, 189; effect of Reconstruction, 222-223; viewed by Supreme Court in New Deal test case,
245, 246, 250; as to school segregation, 261
–Eleventh Amendment, 57-58
–Thirteenth Amendment, 223, 259, 260, 264
–Fourteenth Amendment: effect on structure of Constitution, 223; its application limited in Slaughter-house
cases, 232; considered in Congress, 264-269; interpretation of, as to segregated schools, 255-257, 269-271;
validity of ratification, 258-261; contemplates classes of persons, 282
–Fifteenth Amendment, 223, 264
–Sixteenth Amendment, 229, 237-238. See Income Tax
–Seventeenth Amendment, 30

Page 200 of 210

–Eighteenth Amendment, 242-244
Convention of 1787, 23, 28. See Constitution of the United States
Cooley, Thomas, 282
Cooper, Thomas: punished under Sedition Act, 68; in South Carolina nullification crisis, 178
Corbin, Francis, 37-38
Corwin, Edward S., 212, 224
Cowan, Senator Edgar (of Pennsylvania), 264-265
Creek Indians, 169-171
Cushing, Justice William, 6

Daniel, Justice Peter V.: in Ohio bank tax case, 218

Davis, Justice David: named to Supreme Court, 226
Day, J. M.: protests Federal taxation of his income as State judge, 229
Day, Justice William R.: defines limits of Federal power, 241
Debt Assumption Act of 1790: Virginia protests, 58-60
Debs, Eugene, 238
Declaration of Independence: provisions as to States reviewed, 4-7
Delaware: ratines Constitution, 43; rejects Virginia Resolution, 83; opposes Embargo Acts, 128; opposes
interposition in tariff controversy, 180-184; rejects Fourteenth Amendment, 260
Democratic National Convention: in 1896, denounces oppression by Federal judges, 238
Desha, Joseph, Governor of Kentucky: denounces Supreme Court of the United States in land controversy
case, 166-167
Doane, Elisha: appealed Susannah case to Federal court, 61-62
Doctrine of ’98: based on Tenth Amendment, 86-91
Douglas, Justice William O.: on dangers of judicial sociology, 275; in Tidelands case, 290; as to union shop
in railways, 202-203
Dred Scott Case, 210-213
Duane, William: violation of Sedition Act, 68
Dunlop, Robert P., Governor of Maine: in fugitive slave dispute with Georgia, 206

Embargo Acts: of 1807, adopted by Congress, 127; of 1808, opposed in New England, 127-131; of 1813-
1814, resisted by Massachusetts and Connecticut, 136-139
Emerson, John: figures in Dred Scott case, 210

Fairfax, Thomas Lord: land litigation in Virginia, 120-125

Fair Labor Standards Act: upheld by Supreme Court, 250-251
Federalist Papers: ratification by distinct States, 19; on Federal-State relationship, 29-32; immunity from
suit, 54; weakness of judiciary, 93-94; methods of opposing Federal encroachment, 97

Page 201 of 210

Fleming, Judge (Virginia): concurs in protest of United States action in Fairfax lands case, 124
Florida: adopts act as to Negro seamen, 203
Force Act: adopted, 185
France: treaty with United States approved by Virginia, 8; relations with United States, 63-64; 125, 126
Frankfurter, Justice Felix: on formation of union by States, 6; on amending Constitution, 47; in Tidelands
case, 289-290; on judicial review in States, 297; on labor relations, 303
Freedmens Bureau Bill, 264
Fugitive Slave Acts: of 1793, 201; Northern States seek to nullify, 203-216 passim, held unconstitutional by
Wisconsin Supreme Court, 214
Fuller, Chief Justice Melville, 225

Garrison, William Lloyd, 202

Georgia: ratifies Constitution, 43; defies Supreme Court in Chisholm case, 53-58; interposes against Bank of
United States, 146, 151; wars with Supreme Court in Yazoo land case, 167-169; resolutions against tariff,
175, 179; Negro Seamens Act, 203; feuds with Maine as to fugitive slaves, 205-207; legislature of, denounces
judicial legislation, 305; interposition by State Supreme Court, 306
Gettysburg Battlefield Cemetery, 238
Gilmer, Governor Thomas Walker of Virginia: interposes his powers against New York, 205
Gilmer, George R., Governor of Georgia: resists United States government as to Indian territory, 172
Glover, Joshua: slave figures in Wisconsin case, 213
Granger Cases, 235, 236
Gray, Horace: named to Supreme Court, 228
Grayson, William: opposes Constitution in Virginia controversy, 40
Great Britain: recognized States as sovereign, 7; boundary dispute with Maine, 207-208
Grier, Justice Robert C.: named to Supreme Court, 226
Griswold, Governor Roger of Connecticut: rejects Federal order for troops, 1812, 134

Hamilton, Alexander: on State-Federal relations, 27, 29-30; on suits against States, 54; on constitutionality
of legislative acts, 72; on constitutional checks and balances, 93; on welfare clause of Constitution, 247
Hamilton, Governor James of South Carolina: 178, 182-183
Hammond, James H., 178
Harlan, Justice John M. (1833-1911): named to Supreme Court, 227-228; upholds States rights in
Minnesota rate regulation case, 240; on dangers of judicial usurpation, 273
Harlan, Justice John M. (1899-): on judicial review in Illinois, 297-298; in Slochower case, 301-303
Hartford Convention, 136-144
Henry, Patrick: warns of State destruction, 3; inquires into preamble of Constitution, 19; in Virginia
Convention, 34-40
Hoar, Samuel: his mission to South Carolina, 203
Holmes, Justice Oliver W.: dissents in child labor case, 241; on economic and moral beliefs of judges, 274

Page 202 of 210

Houston, Thomas: captain of Convention, figures in Olmstead case, 103
Hughes, Chief Justice Charles Evans: on regulation of commerce, 236; decisions expanding Federal
authority, 244; declares court has no right to amend Constitution, 272
Humphrey, Senator Hubert, 283
Hunt, Justice Ward: named to Supreme Court, 227; on taxation, 75
Hunter, David: litigant in Lord Fairfax land case, 1796, 120-125

Illinois: resists Bank of the United States, 145-146; opposes annexation of Texas, 208; State load limit law
voided in part by Supreme Court, 293-294; State provision as to judicial review voided by Supreme Court,
296-299
Income tax, Federal: foreseen by Madison, 30, 31; by Mason, 35; adopted by Congress, 229; invalidated by
Supreme Court, 237
Indiana: resists Bank of the United States, 145; defends protective tariff, 176; restrained by Federal courts as
to tax assessment, 239; prohibited immigration of Negroes, 268; opposed integration of schools, 270
Indiana Company, 54-55
Indians: in Georgia, 169-173; treated as class under Fourteenth Amendment, 283-284
Internal Improvements, 158-161
Interposition: right of asserted by Virginia Resolution, 77; expounded by Madison, 86-98; broadened by
Calhoun, 178-179; further developed by Calhoun, 182, 186-199; ranges of defined, 97, 180-181; 194-195;
right of denied by Marshall, 109; by State judicial authorities, 118, 119-120, 122, 166, 22O, 221-222
–by States: Alabama, 176, 203, 305; Arkansas, 306; Connecticut, 130-131, 134-135, 139, 157, 204, 208, 209,
243; Delaware, 128; Florida, 203; Georgia, 53-58, 146, 151, 167-173, 175, 176, 179, 203, 305, 306; Illinois,
145-146, 204, 208; Indiana, 145, 204; Iowa, 204, 221-222; Kentucky, 62-85, 146, 157, 161-167; Louisiana,
203; Maine, 204, 208, 212-213; Maryland, 146, 208; Massachusetts, 56, 127, 128-130, 133-134, 136, 139,
204, 208-209, 213; Michigan, 204, 208, 209; Minnesota, 239-240; Mississippi, 179, 305; Nebraska, 240; New
Hampshire, 60-62, 105-108, 157, 204; New York, 127, 157, 204, 205, 213, 243; North Carolina, 60, 146,
305; Ohio, 151-158, 204, 208, 213, 216-221; Oregon, 238; Pennsylvania, 104-118, 157-158, 204, 209; Rhode
Island, 127, 131, 135, 204, 209, 242; South Carolina, 157, 158-159, 175, 203, 262, 305; Tennessee, 146;
Texas, 306; Vermont, 135, 204, 208, 209, 212; Virginia, 62-85, 120-125, 160, 175, 179-180, 262, 305;
Wisconsin, 204, 213-215
Iowa: resists Supreme Court as to State bonds, 221-222
Iredell, Justice James: in Chisholm case, 56; in Doane case, 107

Jackson: Justice Robert: decides for National Labor Relations Board in Pennsylvania case, 292-293
James, Joseph B., 260-261; 268
Jefferson, Thomas: on State sovereignty, 5; transmits Virginias approval of treaty to France, 8; drafts
Kentucky Resolution, 71; in Embargo crisis, 127; drafts protest against internal improvements, 159-160; his
opinion on Federal judiciary, 275-276; 5, 273
Johnson, President Andrew: on Reconstruction Act, 261; vetoes civil rights act, 265
Johnson, Justice William: on Kentucky land claimant laws, 162; voids South Carolina Negro Seamens Act,
203
Jones, Governor William of Rhode Island: refuses to call out State militia, 1812, 133

Page 203 of 210

Josiah, Captain James: captain of Le Gerard, figure in Olmstead case, 103
Judicial Power: need for check upon urged, 276-277
Judiciary Act of 1789, 121-122, 124

Kansas: in 1868 approved separate schools, 270

Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, 211
Kent, Edward, Governor of Maine: in dispute with Georgia, 206-207
Kentucky Resolutions: events leading to, 62-71; provisions reviewed, 71-76; second resolution adopted, 84-
86
Kentucky: adopts resolutions against Alien-Sedition Acts, 62-86; imposes tax on Bank of the United States,
146; denounces Supreme Court, 157; resists Supreme Court in land controversy, 161-167; defines limit on
interposition, 180-181; feuds with Ohio as to fugitive slaves, 209-210; rejects Fourteenth Amendment, 260

Labor Relations: federal control of sustained by Supreme Court, 249; Supreme Court approves union shop
as to railways, 303-304; in Pennsylvania, 292-293
Lamar, Justice Lucius Q. C.: named to Supreme Court, 228
Lee, Richard Henry: in Virginia Convention of 1788, 34
Legal Tender Case, 228-229
Lehman, Senator Herbert, 243-244
Lincoln, Levi, Governor of Massachusetts: protests Embargo Acts, 1809, 128-129
Livingston, Edward: on role of Supreme Court in State-Federal disputes, 193-195
Lloyd, William: drafts report in Massachusetts denouncing embargo, 136
Louisiana: opposes interposition in tariff controversy, 180; adopts act as to Negro seamen, 203; position in
Slaughterhouse cases, 232; Negro voting in, 233; railway segregation law approved by Supreme Court, 271;
in Tidelands litigation, 290-292
Lumpkin, Wilson, Governor of Georgia: resists John Marshall as to Cherokee lands, 173
Lyon, Matthew: indicted and convicted of sedition, 69-70

Madison, James: on sovereignty, 16; on ratification of Constitution, 19; on constitutional amendments, 25;
on limitations of Federal government, 29, 30-32; in Virginia Convention, 37-38; urges Virginia Resolution
against Alien and Sedition Acts, 76; expounds Virginia Resolution, 86-98 passim; turns to more nationalist
view, 91, 181; pardons General Bright and troops in Olmstead case, 113; in War of 1812, 133; advises against
“Virginia Protest,” 160; on welfare clause of Constitution, 246; mentioned, 39, 273
Maine: feuds with Georgia as to fugitive slaves, 205-207; wars with Great Britain in boundary dispute, 207-
208; opposes annexation of Texas, 208; resolves against Supreme Court in Dred Scott case, 212-213
Marshall, Chief Justice John: on State sovereignty, 6; on nature of the State, 8; on power of State to tax
Federal instrumentalities, 32, 146-148, 155-156; as to Tenth Amendment, 47; on Sedition Act, 66; denies
rights of States to interpose, 109; assailed by Spencer Roane, 124; decides against Georgia as to Yazoo lands,
168-169; in Cherokee case, 172-173; general trend under his court, 225; mentioned, 216, 224, 251
Maryland: taxing power limited in McCulloch case, 33, 146-148; ratifies Constitution, 44; endorses internal
improvements, 160; opposes admission of Texas, 208; rejects Fourteenth Amendment, 260

Page 204 of 210

Mason, George: in Virginia Convention, 34, 40; as to slavery, 200
Massachusetts: declares neutrality in near war between New York and Vermont, 7; ratines Constitution, 44;
assails Supreme Courts opinion in Chisholm case, 56; opposes Virginia Resolution, 84; interposes against
Embargo Acts, 128-130; resists declaration of War of 1812, 133; seeks to nullify conscription law, 136-139;
summons militia in War of 1812, 140; criticizes Georgia for resisting Supreme Court in Cherokee lands case,
173; defends protective tariff, 176; opposes South Carolina as to nullification, 184; opposes annexation of
Texas, 208-209; Personal Liberty Law, 209; declares will not be bound by courts opinion in Dred Scott case,
213
Matthews, Justice Stanley, 228
McCulloch, James W., 145
McDuffie, George, 178
McKean, Judge Thomas: in Olmstead case, 105; in Cobbet case, 118-120
McLean, Justice John, 218
McReynolds, Justice James C., 249-250
Mencken, Henry L., 242
Michigan: resists annexation of Texas, 208; adopts Personal Liberty Law, 209; restrained by Federal courts
as to tax assessment, 239
Militia: Constitutional provisions as to, 21; figures in Hartford Convention, 46-47
Miller, Justice Samuel Freeman: named to Supreme Court, 226; in Slaughterhouse cases, 232
Minnesota: resists Federal courts as to State rate regulation, 239-240; decision of State Supreme Court as to
sale of liquor to Indians, 283-284
Minton, Justice Sherman: in Tidelands case, 291; as to sedition, 295; on judicial review in Illinois, 298; in
Slochower case, 301
Mississippi: resists protective tariff, 179; legislature of, denounces judicial legislation, 305
Missouri: as to railroad regulation, 239
Missouri Compromise of 1820, 211
Moore, A. Harry, Governor of New Jersey, 243
Morrill, Justin, 268
Myrdal, Gunnar, 255-256, 273

Napoleonic Wars, 125-126

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 280, 285
National Industrial Recovery Act, 245
National Labor Relations Board, 292-293
Natural Gas Act, 299-300
Nebraska: dispute with Federal Government as to rate regulation, 239-240; constitutional provision as to
right to work voided on railroads, 302
Negro: social characteristics of, 278-284 passim. See Slavery, Personal Liberty laws, Segregation
Nelson, Justice Samuel: named to Supreme Court, 226; as to Federal taxation of income of State officials,
229

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Nelson, Steve, 294-296
New Hampshire: ratifies Constitution, 43-44; protests Federal decree in admiralty case, 60-62, 104-108;
opposes Virginia Resolution, 84; at Hartford Convention, 140; opposes Bank of the United States, 157
New Jersey: ratifies Constitution, 43; rejects Eleventh Amendment, 57; opposes Vermonts position on use of
troops, 135; on tariff, 180; rescinds ratification of Fourteenth Amendment, 260
New York: engages in near war with Vermont, 7; ratifies Constitution, 44-45; rejects Virginia Resolution,
84; opposes Bank of the United States, 157; defends protective tariff, 184; feuds with Virginia, 204-205;
denounces Supreme Court, 213; resists Eighteenth Amendment, 242; maintained segregated schools, 271
North Carolina: ratines Constitution, 45; resists Federal courts, 60; imposes tax on Bank of the United
States, 146; resolves against tariff, 176; restrained by Federal courts as to railroad regulation, 239; legislature
of, denounces judicial legislation, 305
Nullification: term employed in second Kentucky Resolution, 85; theories of reviewed, 186-199. See
Interposition

Ohio: fight with Bank of the United States, 151-158; defends protective tariff, 176; opposes South Carolina,
184; protests admission of Texas, 208; Arkansas threatens to sever relations with, 209-210; denounces
Supreme Court in Dred Scott case, 213; feuds with Supreme Court as to bank taxation, 216-221; rejects
Fourteenth Amendment, 260; denies vote to Negroes in Reconstruction Period, 268; maintains segregated
schools in post-War era, 270-271
Olmstead, Gideon, 102-105; 108-118
Oregon: governor condemns judicial oligarchy, 238; restrained by Supreme Court as to sale of land, 239;
rescinds ratification of Fourteenth Amendment, 260
Osborn, Ralph, State Auditor of Ohio, 50; passim 151-157
Otis, Harrison Gray: defends Hartford Convention, 142-143

Paterson, Justice William, 107

Pendleton, Edmund, 3, 34-39
Pennsylvania: ratifies Constitution, 43; refuses to ratify Eleventh Amendment, 19; defies Federal courts in
Olmstead case, 104-118 passim; defends stand in Olmstead case, 113-118; feuds with Vermont as to militia,
135-136; opposes Bank of the United States, 157-158; as to tariff, 180, 184; personal liberty laws, 209;
segregated schools, 271; State courts restricted in labor controversy, 292-293; Steve Nelson case from, 294-
296
Percy, William Alexander, 278
Pernoyer, Sylvester (Governor of Oregon), 238
Personal liberty laws, 199-216
Phillips case, 299-300
Pickering, Timothy, 66-70 passim
Police power: doctrine relied upon in Southern States as to separation of races, 277-284 passim
Prohibition: States prevented from banning importation of liquor, 236-237; resistance to by States, 242-244

Railways: expansion in Midwest, 221-222; State control over limited by Supreme Court, 238-240; union

Page 206 of 210

shop contracts in, 302-304
Randolph, Edmund: in Virginia Convention, 15-16, 34, 37; views on slavery, 200
Randolph, John of Roanoke: on sovereignty, 14; on Non-Intercourse Act, 132
Reconstruction: constitutional changes during, 222-234 passim; Supreme Court judges of period, 225-228;
acts of Congress, 260
Reed, Justice Stanley: on Tidelands, 289, 291; on sedition, 295-296; in Slochower case, 301; on judicial
review in Illinois, 298
Revolutionary War, 7
Rhode Island: ratines Constitution, 17, 45-46; assailed by Patrick Henry, 19; denounces Virginia Resolution,
84; opposes Embargo Acts, 127, 131; resists Federal requisition of troops, 135; in Hartford Convention, 140;
defends protective tariff, 176; defies Supreme Court with personal liberty law, 209; resists Eighteenth
Amendment, 242
Rittenhouse, David, 105
Roane, Judge Spencer: protests action of Supreme Court in Fairfax lands case, 124; assails John Marshall,
148-151
Roberts, Justice Owen: in AAA case, 246; as to welfare clause, 246-247; on Fair Labor Standards Act, 248;
on transience of constitutional opinions, 276-277
Robertson, Senator A. Willis, 244
Roosevelt, President Franklin D., 247
Ross, Judge George: in Olmstead case, 104-105

Sandford, John F. A., 211

Schley, William, Governor of Maine, 206
Schools: in Reconstruction period, 269-271; segregation in, upheld by Supreme Court, 271-272; segregation
in, prohibited by Supreme Court, 255-256; prospect of abandonment in Southern States, 284
Scott, James Brown, 9
Scott, General Winfield: in South Carolina, 183; in Maine, 208
Seabury Report, 300
Sedition: Act of 1798, 23-24, 65-66; State laws against voided by Supreme Court, 294-296
Segregation: never prohibited by Fourteenth Amendment, 262-271; prohibited by Supreme Court, 255 ff; in
District of Columbia, 269; basis for in Southern States, 277-284
Seward, William Henry, Governor of New York, 205
Sherman, John, 269
Skiras, Justice George, 237
Slaughterhouse cases, 232
Slavery: sanctioned by Constitution, 22, 200-201; colonization plan urged to end, 201-208
Slochower, Harry, 300-303
Smith, Alfred E., 243
Smith, Judge A. B., 213

Page 207 of 210

Smith, Congressman Howard, 295
Smith, U.S. Marshal John, 110
Snyder, Simon, Governor of Pennsylvania, 110
Social Security Act, 250
South Carolina: ratifies Constitution, 43-44; taxes Bank of the United States, 157; interposes against internal
improvements, 158-159; objects to tariff of 1825, 175; nullification movement in, 177-185; adopts Negro
Seamens Act, 203; dispensary laws voided by Supreme Court, 239; interposes in school segregation cases,
262; legislature of, denounces judicial legislation, 305
Southern Manifesto denouncing judicial legislation, 306
Sovereignty: beginnings of State concept, 4, 5, 6; retained expressly under Articles of Confederation, 11; not
relinquished in Constitution, 13-15; discredited by Paterson, 107; upheld by Iredell, 107; by McKean, 120;
basic to theory of interposition, 186-187; impaired by Supreme Court, 286-304. See Interpositionby States
States: nature of defined, 8-9; powers under Articles of Confederation, 12; ratification of Constitution, 17-19,
42-47; their role under Constitution, 18-28; powers discussed in Federalist papers, 29-32; danger to foreseen
by Henry and Mason, 35-41; status prior to Articles of Confederation, 107, 248; role diminished in recent
times, 234-241, 244-251 passim, 284-304; rightful position urged by Abel Parker Upshur, 306-307. See
Constitution of the United States, Tenth Amendment, Interposition
Stevens, Thaddeus, 259-260, 266
Stone, Chief Justice Harlan F.: on Tenth Amendment, 47; on Fair Labor Standards Act, 250; on judicial
self-restraint, 276
Story, Justice Joseph: on State sovereignty, 10; in Fairfax case, 125; rules against Kentucky in land
controversy, 162; voids Pennsylvania personal liberty law, 209; on welfare clause of Constitution, 247
Strong, Caleb, Governor of Massachusetts, 133-134
Strong, Justice William, 227
Sugar producers, 237
Supreme Court of the United States: abuse of powers foreseen, by Mason, 40-41; by Madison, 89-91;
possible checks against, 64, 91-94. See Constitution of the United States, specific cases, judges Sutherland,
Justice George: on State rights, 248; on permanency of Constitution, 272; protests Federal control of labor
relations, 249
Swayne, Justice Noah Haynes, 226

Taft, Chief Justice William Howard: speaks for unanimous court in approving constitutionality of school
segregation, 244; 271-272
Taney, Chief Justice Roger B.: passes on Fugitive Slave Act, 210; in Dred Scott case, 211-212; rebukes
Wisconsin in fugitive slave case, 214; in Ohio bank tax case, 218; his role as guardian of States rights, 225; in
Charles River Bridge case, 234
Tariff: in 1789, for protection of manufacturers, 174; act of 1825, 174; Harrisburg Convention, 175
“Tariff of Abominations”: resisted by Southern States, 176-178
Tassels, George: figures in Georgia controversy, 171-172
Taxation, State powers of: limited by Marshall in McCulloch case, 147; further limited in Ohio bank
litigation, 217, 218
Taylor, George Keith, 79-83

Page 208 of 210

Taylor, John of Caroline: on sovereignty, 9, 14; his role in Virginia Resolution, 76-83, passim
Tazewell, Littleton Waller: on jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, 193
Telfair, Edward, Governor of Georgia: on refusing to appear in Chisholm case, 57
Tennessee:levies tax on Bank of the United States, 146
Texas: controversy over annexation, 208-209; restrained by Federal courts as to railroad regulation, 239;
position in Tidelands case, 290-291; interposition as to natural resources, 306
Tidelands Cases, 192; 287-292
Tompkins, Daniel D., Governor of New York: opposes Embargo Acts, 1808, 127
Troup, George, Governor of Georgia: on sovereignty, 14; resists Supreme Court in Indian claims, 170
Turnbull, Robert J.: in nullification controversy, 181

Upshur, Abel Parker, 195; 305-307

Van Devanter, Justice Willis: protests Federal control of labor relations, 249
Vermont: hostilities with New York, 7; disapproves Virginia Resolution, 84; refuses Federal order for
troops, 135; in Hartford Convention, 140; as to tariff, 180; personal liberty laws, 204-209; opposes
annexation of Texas, 208; denounces Supreme Court in Dred Scott case, 212
Vinson, Chief Justice Fred M.: on limitations of Supreme Court, 275
Virginia: approves treaty with France, 8; Convention of 1788, 34-43; reservations in ratifying Constitution,
42-43; challenges Supreme Court in early land case, 54-55; her position as to Chisholm case, 56-57; ratifies
Eleventh Amendment, 57-58; as to debt assumption, 58-60; adopts Resolution of 1798, 76-79; opposes
Pennsylvania in Olmstead case, 117; opposes internal improvements, 160; dispute with Kentucky on land
laws, 161-167; as to tariff, 175, 179-180; feuds with New York, 204-205; interposes against Supreme Court
in school segregation case, 262; legislature of, denounces judicial legislation, 305
Virginia Protest: drafted by Jefferson, 159-160
Virginia Resolution of 1798: 62-83 passim; cited in Fairfax case, 124; embraced by Ohio, 152; revived by
Wisconsin as to Fugitive Slave Act, 213-215
Voting: right held to come from the State, 233

Waite, Chief Justice Morrison R.: named to Supreme Court, 227

Warren, Charles: on Dred Scott case, 212; on Ohio bank controversy, 218; Slaughterhouse case, 232
Warren, Chief Justice Earl: in school segregation case, 255; in Steve Nelson case, 294
War for Southern Independence, 225 ff, 259
War of 1812: blockade of New England coast, 139
Washington, Justice Bushrod: on Eleventh Amendment, 111-113; decides against Kentucky in land case,
163
Washington, George: letter transmitting Constitution to Congress, 28; farewell address, 272-273
Wayne, Justice James M.: decides against Ohio in bank taxation case, 221
Webster, Daniel: condemns Conscription Act of 1814, 138-139; mentioned, 204, 216

Page 209 of 210

West Virginia: in jurisdictional dispute with Supreme Court, 191; ratifies Fourteenth Amendment, 271
Wilkins, Roy, 280
Wilson, Justice James: on Chisholm case, 56
Wisconsin: revives “Doctrine of ’98” in interposing against Supreme Court in fugitive slave case, 213-215
Woodbury, Justice Levi, 219-220
Woods, Justice William B.: named to Supreme Court, 228
Worcester, Samuel A.: in Cherokee land controversy, 173

Yazoo Lands: dispute between Georgia and the Supreme Court, 167-169
Young, Edward T.: Attorney General of Minnesota, his fight against Supreme Court as to rate regulation
law, 239-240

Page 210 of 210