Mr. Rufus King, a distinguished member of the Convention from Massachusetts, a few days afterward, said, to the same effect: "He was fully convinced that the question concerning a difference of interests did not lie where it had hitherto been discussed, between the great and small States, but between the Southern and Eastern. For this reason he had been ready to yield something, in the proportion of representatives, for the security of the Southern.... He was not averse to giving them a still greater security, but did not see how it could be done."[106]
The wise men who formed the Constitution were not seeking to bind the States together by the material power of a majority; nor were they so blind to the influences of passion and interest as to believe that paper barriers would suffice to restrain a majority actuated by either or both of these motives. They endeavored, therefore, to prevent the conflicts inevitable from the ascendancy of a sectional or party majority, by so distributing the powers of government that each interest might hold a check upon the other. It was believed that the compromises made with regard to representation—securing to each State an equal vote in the Senate, and in the House of Representatives giving the States a weight in proportion to their respective population, estimating the negroes as equivalent to three fifths of the same number of free whites—would have the effect of giving at an early period a majority in the House of Representatives to the South, while the North would retain the ascendancy in the Senate. Thus it was supposed that the two great sectional interests would be enabled to restrain each other within the limits of purposes and action beneficial to both.
The failure of these expectations need not affect our reverence for the intentions of the fathers, or our respect for the means which they devised to carry them into effect. That they were mistaken, both as to the maintenance of the balance of sectional power and as to the fidelity and integrity with which the Congress was expected to conform to the letter and spirit of its delegated authority, is perhaps to be ascribed less to lack of prophetic foresight, than to that over-sanguine confidence which is the weakness of honest minds, and which was naturally strengthened by the patriotic and fraternal feelings resulting from the great struggle through which they had then but recently passed. They saw, in the sufficiency of the authority delegated to the Federal Government and in the fullness of the sovereignty retained by the States, a system the strict construction of which was so eminently adapted to indefinite expansion of the confederacy as to embrace every variety of production and consequent diversity of pursuit. Carried out in the spirit in which it was devised, there was in this system no element of disintegration, but every facility for an enlargement of the circle of the family of States (or nations), so that it scarcely seemed unreasonable to look forward to a fulfillment of the aspiration of Mr. Hamilton, that it might extend over North America, perhaps over the whole continent.
Not at all incompatible with these views and purposes was the recognition of the right of the States to reassume, if occasion should require it, the powers which they had delegated. On the contrary, the maintenance of this right was the surest guarantee of the perpetuity of the Union, and the denial of it sounded the first serious note of its dissolution. The conservative efficiency of "State interposition," for maintenance of the essential principles of the Union against aggression or decadence, is one of the most conspicuous features in the debates of the various State Conventions by which the Constitution was ratified. Perhaps their ideas of the particular form in which this interposition was to be made may have been somewhat indefinite; and left to be reduced to shape by the circumstances when they should arise, but the principle itself was assumed and asserted as fundamental. But for a firm reliance upon it, as a sure resort in case of need, it may safely be said that the Union would never have been formed. It would be unjust to the wisdom and sagacity of the framers of the Constitution to suppose that they entirely relied on paper barriers for the protection of the rights of minorities. Fresh from the defense of violated charters and faithless aggression on inalienable rights, it might, a priori, be assumed that they would require something more potential than mere promises to protect them from human depravity and human ambition. That they did so is to be found in the debates both of the General and the State Conventions, where State interposition was often declared to be the bulwark against usurpation.
At an early period in the history of the Federal Government, the States of Kentucky and Virginia found reason to reassert this right of State interposition. In the first of the famous resolutions drawn by Mr. Jefferson in 1798, and with some modification adopted by the Legislature of Kentucky in November of that year, it is declared that, "whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party; that this Government, 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."
In the Virginia resolutions, drawn by Mr. Madison, adopted on the 24th of December, 1798, and reaffirmed in 1799, the General Assembly of that State declares that "it views the powers of the Federal Government as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact, as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that, in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits the authorities, rights, and liberties, appertaining to them." Another of the same series of resolutions denounces the indications of a design "to consolidate the States by degrees into one sovereignty."
These, it is true, were only the resolves of two States, and they were dissented from by several other State Legislatures—not so much on the ground of opposition to the general principles asserted as on that of their being unnecessary in their application to the alien and sedition laws, which were the immediate occasion of their utterance. Nevertheless, they were the basis of the contest for the Presidency in 1800, which resulted in their approval by the people in the triumphant election of Mr. Jefferson. They became part of the accepted creed of the Republican, Democratic, State-Rights, or Conservative party, as it has been variously termed at different periods, and as such they were ratified by the people in every Presidential election that took place for sixty years, with two exceptions. The last victory obtained under them, and when they were emphasized by adding the construction of them contained in the report of Mr. Madison to the Virginia Legislature in 1799, was at the election of Mr. Buchanan—the last President chosen by vote of a party that could with any propriety be styled "national," in contradistinction to sectional.
At a critical and memorable period, that pure spirit, luminous intellect, and devoted adherent of the Constitution, the great statesman of South Carolina, invoked this remedy of State interposition against the Tariff Act of 1828, which was deemed injurious and oppressive to his State. No purpose was then declared to coerce the State, as such, but measures were taken to break the protective shield of her authority and enforce the laws of Congress upon her citizens, by compelling them to pay outside of her ports the duties on imports, which the State had declared unconstitutional, and had forbidden to be collected in her ports.
There remained at that day enough of the spirit in which the Union had been founded—enough of respect for the sovereignty of States and of regard for the limitations of the Constitution—to prevent a conflict of arms. The compromise of 1833 was adopted, which South Carolina agreed to accept, the principle for which she contended being virtually conceded.
Meantime there had been no lack, as we have already seen, of assertions of the sovereign rights of the States from other quarters. The declaration of these rights by the New England States and their representatives, on the acquisition of Louisiana in 1803, on the admission of the State of that name in 1811-'12, and on the question of the annexation of Texas in 1843-'45, have been referred to in another place. Among the resolutions of the Massachusetts Legislature, in relation to the proposed annexation of Texas, adopted in February, 1845, were the following: