Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/98

 90 Southern Historical Society Papers,

be executed on the States collectively/' Listen to another great Virginian, upon whom was conferred the proud title of * * father of the Constitution/' **a union of the States containing such an in- gredient seems to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound." Listen yet again to the words of Alexander Hamilton, then and afterwards the ablest and most determined advocate among the men of the Revolution of a strong consolidated government, impossible. It amounts to a war between the parties * * * and a dissolution of the Union will ensue." Can anything be more con- clusive of the fact that no power of coercion inhered in the govern- ment by virtue of the Constitution, or was derived from any other source than the bare-faced dogma that ** might makes right."
 * How can this force be exerted upon the States collectively? It is

To the casual observer of American history it might seem that until the great civil war the career of the United States was peculiarly free from the difficulties and dangers that usually attend any new departure in the science of government ; that the ship of state suc- cessfully launched by the men of '76 and '89, and buffeted only at long intervals by the storms of foreign war, has continued to move grandly on with gleaming sails, over placid seas and under summer skies. He does not see that one part of the crew is arraying itself against the other. He does not hear the deep mutterings of discon- tent and the bitter curses of wrath and hate which foretell an internal conflict more desperate and deadly than any yet waged against a foreign foe, which will drench her decks with blood and convert her hold into a reeking charnel house. Yet these things existed almost from the inception of the government, and to the student of our political history presaged the coming storm as surely as cause pro- duces effect in the moral and as night follows the day in the physical world.

VIRGINIA AND KENTUCKY RESOLUTIONS OF 1798-99.

The year 1798, scarcely a decade removed from the birth of the Union, witnessed the first infraction of the Constitution in the passage of the ** alien and sedition laws " by Congress. The freedom of the press — that great muniment of personal liberty and political rights, a principle descended to us by right of inheritance from the mother