the "

sovereignty, freedom, and independence" of each State were left unimpaired. There is not a syllable to warrant the contrary claim.'

Now let us, in conclusion, point out the important powers belonging to the several sovereign States which they retained:

1. The State was the heir of all property belonging to one of its citizens--man, woman, or child--who died without other heirs.

2. The State could condemn for public use any land or other property in its borders.

3. The State could punish its citizens for treason2 (See Constitution of the U. S., Art. IV, sec. 11, clause 2), felony or other crimes against the peace and dignity of the State.

4. The State could provide for the probate of deeds,

the States were entrapped when they adopted the Constitution, he says: "The passage from plural to singular was accomplished, although it took some people a good while to realize the fact.”

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And even the great expounder," Mr. Webster, confounded the Continental Congress with the Congress of the Confederation. In his speech to the young men of Albany, N. Y., May 28, 1851, he said: "And you, my young friends of Albany, if you will take the pains to go back to the debates of the period, from the meeting of the first Congress, in 1774, I mean the Congress of the Confedera tion, to the adoption of the present Constitution, and the enactment of the first laws under it," etc.

1 Mr. Madison, in the Federalist, No. XL, replying to those who asserted that the Convention in framing the Constitution had not kept in view the fundamental principles of the Articles, says: "I ask, what are these principles? Do they require, that in the establishment of the Constitution, the States should be regarded as distinct and independent sovereignties? They are so regarded by the constitution proposed.”

2 The power to punish for treason was destroyed by the Federal Government in 1861-'65; since then many persons guilty of it have been rewarded for it by that Government; and it is now proposed to place them on the pension rolls at the expense, in part, of the people of the Southern States.

THE SOUTH AGAINST THE NORTH.

ELSE LIBRA

OF TH

UNIVERSITY

CALIFORN

conveyances, powers of attorney, and wills, and enforce compliance with their terms.'

5. The State could punish one of its citizens for any trespass, assault, libel, or any other offense committed by him against the person or the property or the reputation of another citizen.

6. The State could establish and enforce relations between husband and wife, parent and children, employer and employee, and corporations and the people.

7. The State could provide for the education of the children of its citizens, the care of the unfortunate deaf, dumb, blind, insane, and helpless poor.

8. The State could exclude undesirable foreigners from its borders, and its right to do so was never delegated to the Congress of the United States.

9. The State could make gold and silver coin a tender in the payment of debts. This it never surrendered, nor did it delegate to the Congress a concurrent power.

10. The State could determine the qualifications of electors and of public officers. And, in short,

11. The State reserved to itself those powers which in the words of Mr. Madison (Federalist XLV) “extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State."

With the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution thus set before him, the reader is prepared to judge for himself, without respect to great names, whether the reasoning in the following chapters is founded on truth or error.2

1The Stamp Act of June 13, 1898, which is a substantial reenactment of the law of June 30, 1864, nullifies State laws regulating the certification and the validity of contracts, conveyances, etc., unless a Federal revenue stamp be attached to each one; and it does this without any expressed or implied power delegated in the Constitution.

2 See Note E.

NOTE D.

Among the bills passed by the Congress during its first four years, without any unquestioned Constitutional authority, were the following:

1. To take charge of river pilots in the several States, and prescribe their duties.

2. To regulate contracts between merchant seamen and their em ployers.

3. To establish a United States Bank.

4. To apportion members of Congress among the States after the census of 1790. This was vetoed by the President.

5. To declare what coins should be legal tender.

6. To prescribe the "duty" of the Governor of a State to which a fugitive from justice has fled.

7. To prescribe the duties of magistrates of counties, cities and towns whenever a fugitive from labor should be brought before them by the person claiming his labor.

It was claimed that the first and second of these fell under the power to regulate commerce; that the third fell under the power to make all laws which should be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the power to collect taxes and to appropriate them; that the fifth fell under the power to regulate the value of coins (although the right of each State to make gold and silver coins a tender for a debt was recognized); and that the sixth and seventh fell under-nobody knows what power.

To the claim regarding the second it may be objected that, if it is valid, Congress can regulate the wages of teamsters engaged in interstate commerce; to that regarding the fifth it may be objected that, if Congress can declare what shall be legal tender, it can de clare that gold and silver coins shall not be a legal tender, and thus nullify the power of the several States; to that regarding the sixth and seventh it may be objected that, if Congress can prescribe the duties of the executive and judicial officers of a State, the State Governments are little more than agents to carry out the will of the Congress; and in regard to all these claims it may be objected that, if they are valid, it was useless to place any enumeration of powers in the Constitution.

NOTE E.

It is important, in view of the shameful perversion of truth since 1861, that it be impressed on the mind that the first ten amendments were added to the Constitution for the purpose of shielding the people against Federal encroachments on their rights, and that they have nothing to do with State or individual encroachments. This

is important because ignorance and fanaticism have not labored in vain.

Among the first authoritative expositions (from the standpoint of ignorance) was a resolution passed by the House of Representatives on the 17th of March, 1862, instructing a committee to inquire into the arrest of two fugitive slaves in the District of Columbia, “and whether the arrest and imprisonment is not a direct violation of that provision of the Constitution (the Fifth Article of Amendments), which says that no person shall be deprived of his life or liberty without due process of law." Afterwards this perversion of truth became generally acceped as truth. and all these restraints on the Federal Government were thought to be restraints on the States or the people.

And even the Washington Post, Administration organ, commenting on a provision in the new Constitution of Mississippi, which denies a jury trial to a certain class of criminals, copies the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Federal Constitution, and then says: "The. Post does not profess to be learned in the law and will not presume to determine whether or not this Louisiana innovation is in harmony with the fundamental law of the Republic. But to a mind unversed in the intricacies of judicial interpretation it seems that the words 'all criminal cases' in the Federal Constitution must include other crimes than those which are punishable, under the statutes, 'by imprisonment at hard labor.'"-Copied in Wilmington, N. C., Messenger, October 23, 1898.

It is equally important that we do not let the fact escape us that in nearly all our political literature the Constitution has been sup planted by emergencies," "new conditions," "the march of nations," etc.

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CHAPTER IV.

66 ONE PEOPLE.

Familiar as we now are with the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, we are prepared for an intelligent discussion of the unwarranted and vicious doctrines which some seventy years ago began to supplant in some sections of the Union the true principles of the Federal Government. And strangely enough the first effective impulse given to them was in the States which theretofore had been the most consistent and strenuous supporters of the sovereignty, freedom and independence of the several States.

It was in New England; and it is one of the curious coincidences of history that her intellectual forces began to organize for the denial of the teachings of their fathers about the time there was a consolidation of sentiment in the Southern States against the injustice of protection to New England's manufacturers, leading in one State to the adoption of measures threatening the peace of the Union.

The substance of their new doctrines was that the people of the several States had consolidated themselves into a sovereign Nation, and that the people of one State bear about the same relation to the Nation that those of a county bear to their State.

The two most brilliant luminaries (of whom the lesser lights became as mere reflections) who championed this doctrine, were Joseph Story and Daniel Webster.

The celebrated speech of the latter, delivered in the Senate on the 16th of February, 1833, and the former's Commentaries on the Constitution, published the same year, became the accepted exposition of the Constitu