spot in the plan, and afterward it made a good deal of trouble, and helped to bring on the great Civil war. The United States was to guarantee to every State a republican form of government, and to protect each State from invasion; and when the Legislature or the governor of a State should make due application, it was to lend its authority to suppress domestic insurrection. All these different things the general government was required to do, or forbidden to do, by the Constitution.

WHAT THE STATES COULD NOT DO.

Now as a necessary part of this great plan it was plainly required that the several States should be prohibited from exercising any of the functions of the general government. This would be inconsistent with its authority, and lead to endless conflict. In the sphere of its action, and in the exercise of all the powers necessary to a separate national existence, the federal government was to be supreme. So the States were debarred from exercising many of the distinctive powers which belong to separate and independent political sovereignties, or nations. Their local governments were left untouched, but they could not make war or peace, or keep a flag, or make treaties, or levy tariff duties. They could not grant titles of nobility, coin money, issue bills of credit, make anything but gold or silver in tender for payment of debts, pass bills of attainder, or ex post facto laws, or laws impairing the obligation of contracts. So it will be seen that in this nice adjustment and balancing of our political system there are limitations upon the States as well as the general government. But there are not so many of these, comparatively, when we take into account

the great variety and extent of the powers left in the hands of the State governments, which are so much nearer the people.

THE TWO POLITICAL ORBITS.

If I may again borrow the astronomical figure, the States in their political revolutions around the central federal luminary sometimes come in close conjunction with it, and then separate widely from it. Let me illustrate this: Every four years the people of this State, as well as the other States, at their November election, vote for their governor, State officers, and members of the Legislature on the same ticket with the presidential electors and representatives in Congress, these latter officers representing the great legislative and executive departments of the federal government. This is for public convenience, but the State and the nation here seem to come very near each other. So on the other hand, the man who commits a murder in Grand Rapids, in this State, for instance, can no more be tried in the federal court in that city than in London or Paris. The post-office clerk, in the same city, who purloins a money letter is as much out of the jurisdiction of the State court which tries the murderer as if his offense had been committed in China or Japan. Here they are wide apart again.

In the next chapter I shall go over the ground of the long and bitter contest of parties and sections, touching the true relations of the States to the general government; beginning with the doctrine of "State Rights," followed by that of "Nullification," and ending in "Secession," and our great Civil war, where these political hydras were laid forever at rest.

CHAPTER V.

THE TRIAL OF THE CONSTITUTION THE FIRST PARTIES

HAMILTON AND JEFFERSON STATE RIGHTS WEBSTER AND HAYNE NULLIFICATION JACKSON AND CALHOUN SECESSION AND THE CIVIL

WAR.

IN In my last chapter I went over the subject of the relations between the States and the general government as found in the Constitution, giving only the dry theory of the matter. I am now to show how this theory worked when put in practice, and how it brought on a collision, first between parties, and then sections, over the questions of tariff and slavery, and finally resulted in the greatest civil war of history. To my older readers this ground will be familiar,the argument was burned into their minds by that war, - but to the younger generation it is history and not experience.

Possibly all of them may not fully understand how it was that the two sections of this great and enlightened country, in the middle of the nineteenth Christian century, should engage in the most bloody and tremendous war of modern times. It is for these younger readers, chiefly, that I write this brief history

of how it all occurred.

THE FIRST PARTY DIVISION

JEFFERSON AND HAMILTON.

The point of this collision was on the question of the right of a State to judge for itself as to the con

stitutionality or obligation of a statute passed by Congress. This question was, of course, a fundamental one, going as it did directly to the authority of the federal government. The difference began really as early as Washington's first administration, and it had its inception in the ambition and the rivalry of the two foremost statesmen in Washington's cabinet - Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. These two men were the first secretaries, respectively, of the state and treasury departments. Hamilton, the younger of the two, being only thirty-three when called to the cabinet, was a wonderful man, with a genius for government as great as Napoleon Bonaparte's for war. His had been the master mind, the master hand, in framing the Constitution. Jefferson, fourteen years older,another great man and the renowned author of the Declaration of Independence, was not a member of the constitutional convention, having been abroad at the time as our first minister to France. It is likely that both these men had their eyes on the succession to the presidency.

I have no room to go into the details here, but these two rival statesmen first differed as to the policy of the new government, and then politically quarreled, and finally became personally estranged. Washington was greatly disturbed and grieved, but he stuck to Hamilton, and Jefferson left the cabinet accusing his rival of many things, the chief one being that he was arrogating to himself and to the general government too much power and authority at the expense of the States. Jefferson had returned from France very much affected with the popular notions of the French Revolution, and he no doubt looked with considerable

jealousy upon the great influence and power which his younger rival was exercising in the new government and the strong hold which he had upon the mind of his great chief. As was natural, the followers of the two leaders took up their quarrel, and carried it into the new politics of the country, and this was the origin of our first two great political parties, the Federal and the Democratic. Hamilton was, of course, the leader of the Federal party, having Washington and the administration with him, while Jefferson headed the Democratic, which included the opposition element in the country. The charge was made that Hamilton was perverting the Constitution—which he had already made too strong- to build up a powerful federal, central government, to the overthrow and destruction of the rights of the States.

THE STATE RIGHTS DOCTRINE.

It was very natural, of course, that the first party division in the country should have ranged itself around the fortunes of these two leaders. And it was just as natural that Jefferson's followers should idolize him and criticise and disparage his rival, and find fault with everything which he might do. It will be remembered that he was still in power, had the confidence of Washington, and was the guiding spirit of the administration. Parties out of power always criticise and oppose the conduct and measures of their opponents, who have the responsibility of government on their hands. This is the general rule, and sometimes, as in the Civil war, for instance, the fault-finding and opposition are carried almost to the point of treason itself. The same captious spirit has been seen