Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/49

Rh to bestow a supervising power upon Congress, or other department, over the State governments.

The government was organized in 1789 and assumed its place among the nations of the earth. Soon, amendments proposed by the ratifying States were submitted, as the Constitution prescribed, to the respective States and adopted by them. These amendments have no direct relation to the immediate objects for which the Union was formed, and, with few exceptions, were intended to guard against improper constructions of the Constitution, or the abuse of the delegated powers, or to protect the government itself in the exercise of its proper functions. They sought to guard the people and the States against Federal usurpation, and one of them Jefferson pronounced &quot;the corner stone of the Constitution.&quot; The ninth amendment prohibits a construction by which the rights retained by the people shall be denied or disparaged by the enumeration, but the tenth, in language that tyranny cannot pervert or dispute, &quot;reserves to the States respectively or to the people the powers not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the States. &quot; Could any language more conclusively show the ultimate authority of the States, or that the general government has no more right to enforce its decisions against those of the several States where they disagree as to the extent of their respective powers than the latter have of enforcing their decisions in like cases? This reservation was incorporated from a caution deemed unnecessary and excessive by some, because such a reservation is of the very essence and structure of the Constitution, but it has been vindicated as a marked demonstration of the wisdom and sagacity of the fathers. Instead of receiving powers the States had bestowed them, and in confirmation of their original authority most carefully reserved every right they had not relinquished. The powers reserved by those who possessed them, the distinct people of each State, are those