Page:The parallel between the English and American civil wars.djvu/13

CIVIL WARS was in England; it became a controversy as to the nature of the Federal government. "The sovereignty is in the several States," said Calhoun, on behalf of the South, " and our system is a union of 24 sovereign powers under a constitutional compact, not of a divided sovereignty between the States severally and the United States." The doctrine of the North, as maintained by Webster, was "that the constitution of the United States is not a league, confederation or compact between the people of the several States in their sovereign capacity, but a government proper founded on the adoption of the people."

In England, as Ireton said, the controversy was not what the nature of the "supreme trust" was, but whether the "supreme trust" was in King or Parliament. "The ground of the war was not a difference in what the supreme magistracy was, but whether it was in the King alone ."

Let us look beyond the formal ground of

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