JOINT RESOLUTIONS. 907
cising it whenever they think the contingency has
come. You cannot forcibly hold men in this
Union, for the attempt to do so, it seems to me,
would subvert the principles of the government
under which we live."
In eighteen hundred and fifty-nine a large politi-
cal meeting of the "Sons of Liberty" in Ohio,
adopted the following resolution :
"Resolved, That the several States comprising
the United States of America are not united on
the principle of unlimited submission to the gene-
ral Government, but that by compact under the
style and title of a Constitution for the United
States, and of amendments thereto, they consti-
tuted a General Government for special purposes,
delegated to that government certain definite
powers, reserving, each State to itself, the resid-
uary mass of right to their own self-government,
and that whensoever the General Government as-
sumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthori-
tative, void and of no force; and, being void, can
derive no validity from mere judicial interpreta-
tion; that in this compact each State acceded as a
State, and is an integral party; that this Govern-
ment, created by this compact, was not made the
exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers
delegated to itself, since that would have made its
discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure
of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of
compact among parties having no common judge,
each party has an equal right to judge for itself,
as well of infractions as of the mode and measure
of redress."
The resolution is an exact copy of the Kentucky
resolution of seventeen hundred and ninety-eight,
drafted by Jefferson, except the words "and being
void can derive no validity from mere judicial in-
terpretation," which were doubtless inserted to
meet the decision of the Supreme Court of the
United States, in the Dred Scott case.
Your Committee submit whether in view of the
foregoing, and other well known historical remin-
iscencies, there is not some reasonable ground for
believing that the seceding States were honest and
sincere in their convictions, although they led them |
Report of the
Committee. |
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