1809-12. THE STATES AND THE CONSTITUTION.

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doctrine of State interposition. Boston voted the law repugnant to the Constitution, and called on the Legislature to interfere and save the people from the ruinous consequences of its enforcement. Hallowell declared that when those delegated to make laws transcend the powers given by a fair construction of the instrument whence their powers come, such a law is null, and petitioned the General Court to interfere and stop the career of usurpation. Yielding to the wish of the people, that body enacted a law prescribing fine and imprisonment for any person who, acting under the Force Act, entered by day or by night the house of any citizen against his will, and without a warrant searched for specie, or articles of domestic growth, produce, or manufacture. This was equivalent to a nullification of the Force Act, and was vetoed by the Governor.

In Connecticut, when the Secretary of War, in obedience to an order from Jefferson, called on the Governor to name in or near each port of entry some officer of the militia having "known respect for the laws," on whom the collectors of the customs might call for help, Trumbull refused to obey. He knew, he said, of no authority for making such a request, promptly assembled the Legislature, and addressed it in the language of the Virginia resolution. When, said he, the National Legislature oversteps the bounds placed by the Constitution, it is the duty of the State to interpose and protect the people from the assumed powers of Congress. Delaware pronounced the act an invasion of the constitutional sovereignty of the States. At this crisis the Embargo and the Force Acts were repealed.

Our second war with Great Britain-the war for commercial independence-soon followed, and one week before the declaration the Secretary of War, by order of Madison, called on the States for their quotas of militia. But the gov ernors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island refused. There were, in their opinion, but three purposes for which the President could call out the State troops, and these were to repel invasion, to put down insurrection, and to execute the laws. The country was not invaded; no insurrection existed; no laws were being resisted. The call, therefore,

was unconstitutional, and could not be obeyed. This interpretation was upheld in Massachusetts by the judges; in Rhode Island by the Council; in Connecticut by the Assembly, which now in turn put forth a definition of the Constitution and the rights of the States. In this declaration Connecticut is described as a sovereign, free, and independent State; the United States as a confederacy of States, and the Constitution as a compact which delegates certain powers to Congress, forbids the exercise of those not delegated, and expressly reserves them to the States respectively.

That same year (1812) the territory of Orleans, having formed a constitution, applied to Congress for admission into the Union as the State of Louisiana. The question thus raised was new and serious. For the first time in our history a State comprising territory lying wholly without the bounds of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution was seeking admission "into this Union." A precedent was to be established, for it was certain that if Louisiana were added to the Union other States made from the territory purchased from France would in time seek the same privilege. Is it safe to establish such a precedent? Have we power under the Constitution to admit such States? Will the commercial interests of the East be secure when there are on the floor of Congress senators and representatives from States where inhabitants own no ships, carry on no commerce-nay, have never in the whole course of their lives looked out on the wide expanse of the ocean or seen the waves of the Atlantic breaking on the sand and rocks of our seacoast? were the questions asked on every hand. The bounds of our country, it was asserted, have been set by the definitive treaty with Great Britain in 1783. They are, on the west, the Mississippi river; on the north the possessions of Great Britain; on the south the thirty-first degree from the Mississippi river to the Appalachicola; the Appalachicola to the Flint; a line from the Flint to the St. Mary's river, and by it to the sea. Such was the extent of the United States when the Constitution was framed, and such it must remain. If the framers of that instrument had intended that the area of our country should, some time in the future, be expanded, they would have said so in the Con

1812.

THE MEANING OF NEW STATES.

409

stitution. But the Constitution does not contain one word. from which the right to acquire foreign soil can even be deduced. The phrase "Congress may admit new States into this Union " means this Union as it was when the Constitution was adopted, and the new States that may be admitted must be made on the soil east of the Mississippi.

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These views were well stated in a speech by Josiah Quincy, a representative from Massachusetts. "This bill," said he, which it is now proposed to pass has this assumed principle for its basis: that the three branches of this National Government, without recurrence to conventions of the people in the States, or to the Legislatures of the States, are authorized to admit new partners to a share of the political power in countries out of the original limits of the United States. Now this assumed principle I maintain to be altogether without any sanction of the Constitution. I declare it to be a manifest and atrocious usurpation of power, of a nature dissolving, according to undeniable principles of moral law, the obligations of our national compact, and leading to all the awful consequences which flow from such a state of things. Touching the general nature of the instrument called the Constitution of the United States, there is no obscurity. It has no fabled descent, like the palladiums of ancient Troy, from the heavens. Its origin is not confused by the mists of time, nor hidden by the darkness of past, unexplored ages. It is the fabric of our day. Some now living had a share in its construction. All of us stood by and saw the rising of the edifice. There can be no doubt about its nature. It is a political compact. By whom? and about what? The preamble will answer these questions. It is we the people of the United States, for ourselves and our posterity; not for the people of Louisiana, nor for the people of New Orleans, or of Canada. None of these enter into the scope of the instrument. It embraces only the United States of America.

"I know, Mr. Speaker, that the clause new States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union has been read with all the superciliousness of a grammarian's triumph, accompanied with this most consequential inquiry, Is not this a new State to be admitted? If we were now at the bar of some stall

fed justice, the inquiry would insure the victory to the maker of it. But, sir, we are now before the tribunal of the whole American people, reasoning concerning their rights, their liberties, their Constitution. The question is concerning the interests of the American people, the proprietors of the old United States when they agreed to this article. Dictionaries and spelling books are of no authority. Neither Johnson, nor Walker, nor Webster, nor Dilworth, has any voice in the matter. Sir, the question concerns the proportion of power reserved by this Constitution to every State in this Union. Have the three branches of this Government a right at will to weaken and outweigh the influence respectively secured to each State in this compact by introducing at pleasure new partners situated beyond the old limits of the United States?"

Mr. Quincy then went on to prove that not only had no power been given to Congress to admit States out of the original bounds, but that the idea of so doing had not even occurred to the framers of the Constitution. They were not madmen. They had not taken degrees at the hospital of idiocy. “I have heard," said he, "of six States, and some say more, that will surely be formed beyond the Mississippi. It has even been said that the day is coming when the mouth of the Ohiç will be far to the east of the centre of empire. It is impos sible such a power could be granted. It was not for these men that our fathers fought. It was not for them the Constitution was adopted." You have no right, he argued, "to throw the liberties and property of this people into hotchpotch with the wild men on the Missouri, nor with the mixed, though more respectable, race of Anglo-Hispano-Gallo-Americans who bask on the sands at the mouth of the Mississippi. Do you suppose the people of the Northern and Atlantic States will, or ought to, look with patience and see representatives and senators from the Red river and Missouri pouring themselves on this and the other floor, managing the affairs of a seaboard fifteen hundred miles at least from their resi dence." The bill, he asserted, if it passes, is a death-blow to the Constitution.

"It is my deliberate opinion that if this bill passes th.. bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved; that the States

1813.

STATE RIGHTS IN NEW ENGLAND.

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which compose it are free from their moral obligations; and that as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some to prepare definitely for a separation-amicably if they can, violently if they must." Nor was Mr. Quincy alone in this opinion. When the vote was taken on the passage of the bill, twenty of the thirty-six nays were given by members from New England.

But Louisiana was admitted, and another political ideathe admission of new States lying without the original boundary of the United States-was permanently established.

As the war went on, New England found new cause for the assertion of the principle of State rights and nullification. Her coast east of Montauk Point had neither been blockaded nor molested by the British, and a brisk trade with Europe had in consequence been carried on. But Congress to stop this laid an embargo in 1813, which fell chiefly on New England (for the rest of our coast was already under British blockade), and set that region once more aflame. Thirty-two towns in Massachusetts immediately petitioned the General Court for relief. Various are the forms, said the joint committee of the House and Senate, in which the people have expressed their feelings, but the tone of and spirit in all are the same. They all discover an ardent attachment to the union of these States, and all express a reverence for the national Constitution; but they are all stamped with the melancholy conviction that the basis of that union has been destroyed by a neglect of its principles, and that the durability of the Constitution has been impaired by a perversion and abuse of its powers. After due consideration of their petitions, the committee resolved that the Embargo Act was not constitutional; that the people of Massachusetts had always enjoyed the right of sailing from port to port within the limits of the Commonwealth and of fishing along its coasts; that the power of prohibiting the exercise of their rights was never delegated to Congress; and that all laws passed by the General Government and intended to have such an effect are therefore unconstitutional and void."

The dire need of men for the army and of men for the navy brought before Congress the conscript plan of the Secre