Our Federal Authorities: Its True Nature and Character

For forty years from the ratification of the Structure, it was properly understood that the American States have been united in a political compact through which sure of their powers had been entrusted to a typical agent, whereas their important sovereignty and its attendant rights have been reserved to themselves. One in all these rights was that of secession. It was not till 1830 that the speculation of a completely consolidated nation from which withdrawal was illegal first made an look in Joseph Story’s Commentaries on the Structure. Daniel Webster would rely closely on Story’s work in his debates in Congress with South Carolina Senators Robert Hayne and John C. Calhoun. Story and Webster denied that the Structure was both “a compact between State governments” or that it had been “established by the individuals of the a number of States,” asserting that it had as a substitute been established by “the individuals of the USA within the mixture.” As such, the States have been creatures of the Union reasonably than vice versa, rendering secession not solely not possible, however treasonous. This ebook, written in 1840 by a Virginia lawyer who served as Secretary of the Navy within the Tyler Administration, and later re-issued in Philadelphia in 1863 and once more in New York in 1868, is an excellent response to the Story/Webster concept and in addition serves as a problem to the trendy Leviathan State which is trendy America.