Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 13.djvu/349

 348 Southern Historical Society Papers.

since the States were equal; no authority was above them; sover- eignty belonged to each Commonwealth as an essential part of her nature; every organic law expressed or implied it, and the solemn league between the States declared that each retained her sover- eignty. This all-comprehensive right must have remained in her until she completed the work, and, of course, afterwards. The established States of these commonwealths, and the law of their beings, absolutely controlled the action of the fathers" page 50. Not a mole hill can be built up opposite to this mountain of testi- mony, says the author elsewhere. He says, page 54, that: "The Massachusetts school grew, under the auspices of Nathan Dane, Joseph Story, and Daniel Webster, who were the chief expounders." Dane was an original enemy of the Constitution, and he probably wished his strictures to pass as expositions; Story, broad-minded, thought a grand nation, and power among nations, might, could, would and should grow from construction, and he was in the poten- tial mood; and, moreover, his construction meant fabrication; while Webster, as the advocate, aimed at the triumph and pecuniary ad- vantage of his State and section, and directed his great intellect and luminous logic to the sophistical disproof of his own principle, viz: that " the original parties to the Constitution were the thirteen Con- federated States," and "that their constitutional obligations rests on compact and plighted faith. These are his very words, which, when he approached his final account, he substantially reiterated; but, alas, too late; for he had then produced those 'public convictions,' as Mr. Curtis calls them, which brought war and woe! As to Mr. Curtis, he seems merely to repeat and amplify what the others have written or said," page 54. After stating Webster's ideas, he says Story's teachings were similar. Lincoln substantially repeated these ideas in 1861, as did the Philadelphia Convention of 1866. He was of the Massachusetts school, page 55. "It is not entitled to be called a school of interpretation. It asserts as a fact, that our federal in- strument constitutes a State or nation, when the truth is it constitutes a union of States or federation. Should we not call it a school of fiction or perversion?" To prove the truth of these assertions, he heaps up testimony, piling Pelion upon Ossa, until one would think that doubt or denial had become impossible. To strengthen the almost unanimous assertion of nearly all the leading fathers, most of whom he quotes, he calls up the concurring opinions of the great statesmen from abroad, who are most commonly consulted in this country. Lord Brougham, it seems, declared that, " It is plainly