Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/88

 At one period in the history of our country, said the Union men, the states were independent sovereignties. This was immediately after their separation from the British crown and before the adoption of the Articles of Confederation. Then each state had the power to do what it pleased and was under the control of no authority. It could declare war, make peace, and enter into treaties of alliance. But on the adoption of the Articles, and still more on the adoption of the federal Constitution, the states had yielded up a large portion of their sovereignty for the purpose of forming a government which should be able to protect and defend their rights. They from that time on ceased to be sovereign. They were from then on unknown among the nations of the earth. The states might properly be called sovereigns in the exercise of their reserved rights, but to apply the term any further was a misnomer.

The consolidation of all power in the general government on the one hand, said the Union men further, and the separation of the several states on the other, would be equally fatal to liberty. There would arise out of the one a despotism which would grind and crush everything to earth; and out of