Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/42

14 partments legislative, executive and judicial present, in the whole, a political system as remarkable for its grandeur as it is for its novelty and refinement of organization. (Calhoun's Works, 112, 113, 199.) Under the English form of government, this division with limitations is unknown and parliament is supreme. Madison, in the Federalist, says: &quot;The Federal and State governments are, in fact, but different agents and trustees of the people, instituted with different powers and designed for different purposes.&quot; Hamilton says: &quot;In the compound republics of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.

The Union is not the primary social or political relation of those who formed it. The State governments were already organized and were adequate to all the purposes of their municipal concerns. The Federal government was established only for such purposes as the State governments and the confederation could not sufficiently answer, namely, the common purpose of all the States. The people of the States, not as a unit, not in the aggregate, but separately, hold in themselves all governmental power. One portion they granted to the State governments; another to the government of the Union, and the residue they retained undelegated in themselves. The grants were in trust for their benefit, and created the division of political power between the Federal and the State governments, which division constitutes the gist and sum total of the controversy between the government at Washington and the seceding States. During and soon after a war waged for eight years to resist a claim to legislate for them locally and internally, inferred from parliamentary supremacy, the colonies or