Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/15

Rh Calhoun introduced in the Senate a series of resolutions, three in number, which are well worth the careful study of every student of republican institutions, every lover of human freedom. These resolutions recited (17) the strictly federal character, under the constitution of 1787-89, of the union of American States; with the resultant right, to the States, "of judging, in the last resort, as to the extent of the powers delegated" to the central government and, consequently, of those reserved to the several States, and that action by the central government based upon the contrary assumption must inevitably tend to undue consolidation and to "the loss of liberty itself."

Webster vehemently attacked these resolutions. His argument may be thus epitomized, largely in his own words: (18) How can any man get over the words of the preamble to the constitution itself, "We the people of the United States . . . do ordain and establish this constitution"?; that these words forbid the turning of the instrument into a mere compact between sovereign States; that, in framing and putting into operation the constitution of the United States, "a change had been made from a confederacy of States to a different system, . . . a constitution for a national government"; that "accession, as a word applied to political associations, implies coming into a league treaty or confederacy, by one hitherto a stranger to it"; that, "in establishing the present government," (i. e., the government of the United States as it stood in Webster's time) the "people of the United States . . . do not say that they accede to a league, but they declare that they ordain and establish a constitution,. . . some of them employing the. . . words 'assented to' and 'adopted,' but all of them 'ratifying' "; that "the constitution of the United States is not a league, confederacy or compact between the people of the several States in their sovereign capacities"; that "THE NATURAL CONVERSE OF ACCESSION IS SECESSION."

Note the several test words here: confederacy, constitution, national, compact and ACCEDE.

As to every one of them Webster was wrong, as may be