The Brothers' War - The Original Classic Edition. John Calvin

afterwards went directly on, gathering force and power all the while, until it culminated in

       "A storm-cradled nation that fell."

       [Pg 62]

       CHAPTER V

       AMERICAN NATIONALIZATION, AND HOW IT MADE THE BOND OF UNION STRONGER AND STRONGER GREECE was going down in her contest with Macedon when she gave the world to come the Achaean league, the first historical

       example of full-grown federation. As Freeman says of such a federal government: "Its perfect form is a late growth of a very high

       state of political culture."[27] This historian thus summarizes its essentials:

       "Two requisites seem necessary to constitute federal government in this its most perfect form. On the one hand, each of the members of the union must be wholly independent in those matters which concern each member only. On the other hand, all must be subject to a common power in those matters which concern the whole body of members collectively."[28]

       No author has yet shown a better-considered and more accurate appreciation of the benefits to different communities of federal union. But the islander could not conceive--even at the centre of the British empire spread over the world--the advanced phase of Anglo-Saxon federation in America and Australia, which for want of a better name we may call, using a grand word of our fathers, continental federation.

       And Americans of every generation have misunderstood the true nature of our union, and especially how it was made and how it could be unmade. The fathers[Pg 63] were as much mistaken as to the real authorship of the declaration of independence, the

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       articles of confederation, and the federal constitution, as Burke and many people of his time were as to the true causes of the French revolution, or as the brothers were as to those of their war. In all that the fathers did they were sure that they acted as agents solely of their respective colonies or States, which they believed to be independent and sovereign. Therefore they maintained that

       the authorship of the three great documents just mentioned was that of the separate States, when in truth it was that of the union. When the latter, which had been long forming its rudiments, came into something like consciousness, it at once spurred our fathers to make the declaration of independence. The declaration corresponds to the later ordinances of secession. And this union, gathering strength, led our fathers to make the old confederation; and its articles and the belonging government are closely paralleled by the constitution of the Confederate States and its belonging government. As southern nationalization brought forth the southern confederacy, so it was American nationalization that caused secession from England, the declaration of independence, and the

       confederation which won the Revolutionary war. To summarize the foregoing: Southern nationalization evolved the southern union,

       and American nationalization evolved the American union. The fathers, with the usual undiscernment of contemporaries, by a most natural hysteron proteron conceived the latter union to be the work, product, and result of the constitution. In the intersectional contention, the south accepted the mistakes of the fathers and rested her cause upon them, and the north, instead of correcting them, substituted a huge and glaring mistake of her own. Advocating the maintenance of the[Pg 64] constitution over all the States, she sought to refute the doctrine of State sovereignty urged by the south with the arguments of those who had opposed the adoption of the federal constitution. Patrick Henry and Nathan Dane--we omit the others--argued that the constitution, if ratified,

       would really wipe out State lines and make the central government supreme in authority over the States, and actually sovereign. Could

       the people of the thirteen States have been made to believe this, they would have unanimously rejected the instrument. Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and many others competent to advise, stood in solid phalanx on the other side, and the people were convinced by them that adoption would have no such effect. They decided that the arguments were not good, and the constitution was ratified. But the discredited arguments were afterwards, by a very queer psychological process, taken up by Story, Webster, and a great host, and paraded as unanswerable refutation of the doctrine of State sovereignty, and demonstration that by the constitution the United States had acquired absolute supremacy over the different States.[29] At a later place we will try to show you how Webster's glory outshines that of every other actor, except Lincoln, in the great struggle between north and south. But here we must emphasize

       how, when supporting the fallacies of Patrick Henry and Nathan Dane, he met the one real and signal defeat of his life, to which the drubbing he received from Binney in the Girard College case was a small affair--a defeat none the less signal because at the time,

       and long afterwards, it was and still is crowned as a glorious victory by thousands upon thousands.

       [Pg 65]The force-bill had just been introduced into the senate of the United States. It provided for the collection of the revenue in defiance of the nullification ordinance of South Carolina. The next day, January 22, 1833, Calhoun offered in that body his famous resolutions, embodying his doctrine of nullification, under which he justified the ordinance just mentioned. The 16th of the next month, Webster discussed the two cardinal ones of these resolutions at length. As he summarized them, they affirmed:

       "1. That the political system under which we live, and under which congress is now assembled, is a compact, to which the people of

       the several States, as separate and sovereign communities, are the parties.

       2. That these sovereign parties have a right to judge, each for itself, of any alleged violation of the constitution by congress; and in

       case of such violation, to choose, each for itself, its own mode and measure of redress."

       He had not long before contemplated making an address to the public in answer to Calhoun's pro-nullification letter to Governor Hamilton in the form of a letter from himself to Kent; and it cannot be doubted that he had got himself ready for this; nor can it be doubted that in the twenty-five days' interim he had not only worked over and adapted the unused materials of the address mentioned, but he had most diligently made special preparation for his speech--in short, it may be assumed that he had bestowed upon the subject of the resolutions the most searching examination and profound meditation of which, with his superhuman powers, he was capable. In spite of all his conscientious labors, as I am now especially concerned to impress upon you, he injured and set back the cause of the union by defending it with answerable arguments--nay, rather, with arguments helping the other side.

       [Pg 66]At the outset he severely and sternly rebukes two terms of Calhoun's, one being the use of constitutional compact for constitution, and the other being the accession of a State to the constitution. These terms are utterly impermissible, and are to be scouted. If we accept them, we must acquiesce in the monstrous conclusions which the author of the resolutions draws from them. That is really what Webster says. Note the confident positiveness of his pertinent language, some of which we subjoin:

       "It is easy, quite easy, to see why the honorable gentleman has used it [constitutional compact] in these resolutions. He cannot open the book, and look upon our written frame of government, without seeing that it is called a constitution. This may well be appalling to him. It threatens his whole doctrine of compact, and its darling derivatives, nullification and secession, with instant confutation. Because, if he admits our instrument of government to be a constitution, then, for that very reason, it is not a compact between sovereigns; a constitution of government and a compact between sovereign powers being things essentially unlike in their very natures, and incapable of ever being the same.

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       We know no more of a constitutional compact between sovereign powers than we know of a constitutional indenture of copartner-ship, a constitutional bill of exchange. But we know what the constitution is; we know what the bond of our union and the security of our liberties is; and we mean to maintain and to defend it, in its plain sense and unsophisticated meaning."

       This is enough of the exorcism of that malignant spirit, constitutional compact. Now as to the other malignant spirit. Webster says: "The first resolution declares that the people of the several States 'acceded' to the constitution, or to the constitutional compact,