our minister in England, Mr. Adams, as ex-
plaining the views which were then enter-
tained by himself and the President and
his Cabinet. He says :
" For these reasons, the President would
not be disposed to reject a cardinal doctrine
of theirs, (the rebels,) namely: that the
Federal Government could not reduce the
seceding States to obedience by conquest,
even though he were disposed to question
that proposition. But in fact the President
willingly accepts it as true. Only an im-
perial or despotic government could subju-
gate thoroughly disaffected or insurrection-
ary members of the State. This Federal
Republican system of ours is, of all forms
of government, the very one which is the
most unfitted for such labor,"
Mr. Hamilton, in the Federalist, has
stated precisely the same thing:
" If the Federal Government should
overpass the just bounds of its authority,
and illake a tyrannical use of its powers,
the people, whose creature it is, must ap-
peal too the standard they have formed,
and take such measures to redress the inju-
ry done to the Constitution as the exigency
may suggest, and prudence justify."
These authorities express my views of the
course to be pursued in the case I ha ye pre-
sented, of a conflict between these two su-
preme jurisdictions, each supreme within
its own sphere, and in a case over winch
the judicial tribunals of the country have
no jurisdiction, and of which they have no
cognizance.
Having said thus much in regard to the
inferences properly deducible from the pro-
positions I have laid down, let me proceed
briefly to the establishment of the proposi-
tions themselves.
In support oof the first proposition, I shall
not weary the Convention with any extend-
ed historical investigation, nor shall I cite
any one or two instances in which individ-
ual statesmen of that day may have denied
the sovereignty of the States after the De-
claration of Independence. I could give
the gentleman from Baltimore city, (Mr.
Thomas,) a still more memorable instance
of that denial than any he has furnished.
I could cite to him what is reported by Mr.
Yates, to have been said by James Madi-
son in the Convention which framed the
Constitution of the United States, where,
as reported, Mr. Madison in still stronger
language than he has cited from Mr. Pinck-
ney, of South Carolina, has denied the sov-
ereignty of the States. |
But when we remember that James
Madison is also the author of the 39th
number of the Federalist, that in the Vir-
ginia Convention he opposed with all his
might the views of Patrick Henry, with
regard to the nature and character of the
Constitution, and that he was the author of
the celebrated Resolutions of 1798 and 1799,
we cannot take any isolated opinion and
apply it against the whole current of his
life.
These are not to be taken in opposition
to the current and authentic history of the
times. Ill opposition to all such isolated
opinions I put the articles of confederation
and the treaty of peace, and acts of the leg-
islatures of the several States immediately
after the Declaration of Independence, ill
which they claimed the allegiance of all
persons residing in their limits.
I will not revert to the well known his-
tories of these colonies, to show that they
were only bound together by a common al-
legiance to the King of Great Britain; that
the first settlers came here at different times
and from various quarters, with their inter-
ests separate and distinct; the Huguenot in
South Carolina, the Cavaliers and Episco-
palians in Virginia, the Catholics in Mary-
land. the Quakers in Pennsylvania, the
Dutch in New York, and the Puritans in
New England. It is certain they adopted
diverse institutions, and framed different
laws, and set up different states of society.
I suppose no one will pretend that the law
of Massachusetts, if there was such an one,
authorizes the hanging of witches, or slitting
the ears of the Quakers, or that the blue laws
of Connecticut, if there were such laws,
prohibiting a man from kissing his wife on
Sunday, and requiring every householder
to drive the hung into the barrel to prevent
his cider from working on that holy day,
had any force or effect upon the people of
Maryland, Pennsylvania or Virginia. They
bad different systems of laws, and were
protected by the British Crown in different
degrees. They had different forms of gov-
ernment, some colonial, some provincial,
some chartered. At the time of the Revo-
lution, the common oppression exercised
upon them by the British Crown induced
them to rise and assert their common inde-
pendence.
In full answer to everything that has
been said by the gentleman from Baltimore
city, (Mr. Thomas,) upon this point, I place
this one broad patent fact, that the articles
of confederation themselves, proposed in |
