Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/148

1803. but the view of American history thus suggested was peculiarly interesting. If the chief-justice and his associate expressed correctly the opinions of the strict-constructionist school, the government had at some time been converted from a government of delegated powers into a sovereignty. Such was the belief of Campbell's political friends. Four years after the Dred Scott decision was declared, the State of South Carolina, in Convention, issued an "Address to the People of the Slave-holding States," justifying its act of secession from the Union.


 * "The one great evil," it declared, "from which all other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States. The government of the United States is no longer the government of confederated republics, but of a consolidated democracy.  It is no longer a free government, but a despotism."

If the strict constructionists held this opinion, they necessarily believed that at some moment in the past the government must have changed its character. The only event which had occurred in American history so large in its proportions, so permanent in its influence, and so cumulative in its effects as to represent such a revolution was the Louisiana purchase; and having done what the Federalists expected it to do,—if it had made a new constitution and a government of sovereign powers,—the strict constructionists were not only consenting parties to the change, they were its authors.