Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/41

 Union, but antedated and created that organism. Our systems of government are singularly complex and hence unintelligible to many foreigners. There are two divisions of power—that between the people and their governments, and that between the State governments and the government of the Union. The system is compounded of the separate governments of the several States and the one common government of all the members of the Union, called the government of the United States. Each was formed by written constitutions; those of the several States by the people of each acting separately and in their sovereign character, and that of the United States by the same, acting in the same character, but jointly and in concert instead of separately. Both governments derive their power from the same source and were ordained and established by the same authority. These governments are co-ordinate and there is a subordination of both to the people of the respective states. Limited rights are delegated by the people to their governments, or trustees, and all the residue of the attributes of sovereignty are retained. The division of the powers into such as are delegated specifically to the common and joint government of all the States, to be exercised for the benefit and safety of each and all; and the reservation of all to the States respectively, to be exercised through the separate governments, is what makes ours a system of governments. Taking all the parts together, the people of forty-four independent and sovereign States, confederated by a solemn constitutional compact into one great federal community, with a system of government, in all of which powers are separated into the great primary divisions of the constitution-making and the law-making powers; those of the latter class being divided between the common and joint government of all the States, and the separate and local governments of each State respectively; and finally the powers of both distributed among three separate and independent de-