House Approves Seventeen Amendments
The Congress Sends Twelve Amendments to the States
First Annual Message
Letter to Mrs. Orville Browning
The Great Nation of Futurity
John L. O'Sullivan
Letter to John Johnston
Letter to John D. Johnston
Eulogy of Henry Clay
Means of Elevation
Martin R. Delany
A Glance at Ourselves — Conclusion
Things As They Are
Letter to Owen Lovejoy
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 3rd Debate Part I
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 3rd Debate Part II
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 4th Debate Part I
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 4th Debate Part II
Letter to Jesse W. Fell
The Constitution and the Union
Conquest of Mexico
John C. Calhoun
Disquisition on Government
National Disfranchisement of Colored People
Letter on the Mexican-American War
William Lloyd Garrison
Missouri Compromise
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Editorial Regarding Walker's Appeal
Garrison's Defense of His Positions
William Lloyd Garrison to Thomas Shipley
Number of Slaves in the Territory Enumerated, 1790...
Chapter 13: War with Mexico
Mr. Tallmadge in the Congressional Globe
Speech to Congress
James Tallmadge Jr.
Letter to John Holmes
Southern Runaway Slave Notices and "Our Peculiar D...
The Webster-Hayne Debates
Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality: The...
Maria Stewart
Lecture Delivered at Franklin Hall
Maria W. Miller Stewart
"On the Constitution and the Union"
American Anti-Slavery Society, Declaration of Sent...
Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society
Appeal to the Christian Women of the South
Angelina Grimké
Appeal to Christian Women of the South
Slavery a Positive Good
Speech on Abolition Petitions
Protest in Illinois Legislature on Slavery
Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condi...
Sarah Grimke
"The Right of the People, Men and Women, to Petiti...
Declaration of Sentiments Adopted by the Peace Con...
Poster Advertising Sale of a "Valuable Gang of You...
The Temperance Address
Address to the Slaves of the United States
Letter to Richard Pakenham, British Minister to th...
The American Union
Letter to Williamson Durley
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An Am...
Wilmot Proviso
David Wilmot
Speech on the Mexican War
Andrew Kennedy
American Slavery
The War With Mexico: Speech in the United States H...
Speech on the Oregon Bill
What Are the Colored People Doing for Themselves?
An Address to the Colored People of the United Sta...
State of the Union Address Part I (1848)
Annual Message to Congress
The Address of Southern Delegates in Congress to t...
Prejudice Not Natural: "The American Colonization...
Uses and Abuses of the Bible
Lucretia Mott
Compromise of 1850
Caution!! Colored people of Boston
"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
Emigration of the Colored People of the United Sta...
Our Elevation in the United States
Letter to Harriet Beecher Stowe
Appeal of the Independent Democrats
Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to...
Nebraska Territory
Stephen A. Douglas
Speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Racial Hiera...
R.M.T. Hunter
Fragments on Slavery
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Speech on the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise (P...
Kansas: To Those that Desire that Kansas Should be...
Sociology for the South, or, The Failure of Free S...
George Fitzhugh
Sociology for the South, or The Failure of Free So...
Broadside Advertisement for Runaway Slave
The Doom of the Black Power
Letter to George Robertson
Letter to Joshua F. Speed
The Last Flogging
Democratic Party Platforms
Forcing Slavery Down the Throat of a Free-Soiler
John L Magee
Dred Scott v. Sandford
Roger Taney
Benjamin R. Curtis
Speech on the Dred Scott Decision
Reply to the Dred Scott Decision
Free & Slave-holding States and Territories
A. K. Johnston
Cotton is King
James Henry Hammond
"Mud Sill" Speech
Dred Scott and Disunion
House Divided Speech
Homecoming Speech at Chicago
Speech at Chicago, Illinois
Speech at Springfield, Illinois
Speech in Reply to Douglas at Springfield, Illinoi...
Fragment on Slavery
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 1st Debate
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 2nd Debate
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates 5th Debate
Letter to J. N. Brown
"An Irrepressible Conflict"
William Seward
African Civilization Society
Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural So...
"The Whole Affair Seems the Work of a Madman"
Horace Greeley
Henry Wise
"John Brown Not Insane"
John Brown and the Principle of Nonresistance
Address at Cooper Union
Republican Party Platform (1860)
Democratic Party Platform of 1860
Douglas Faction
Southern Desperation
South Carolina's Declaration of the Causes of Sece...
Distribution of the Slave Population by State
The Fugitive's Song
Fragment on the Constitution and Union
Jefferson Davis
Defense of Lincoln
The Folly of Colonization
Inaugural Address (1825)
Thomas Jefferson to Roger Chew Weightman
Chapter 11: The Nullification Crisis
CIRCULAR: Addressed to Benevolent Ladies of the Un...
Catherine Beecher
Speech on President Jackson's Veto of the Bank Bil...
The Nature, Importance, and Means of Eminent Holin...
Edward Beecher
A Plea for the West
Lyman Beecher
The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions Add...
The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions (Ly...
The Laboring Classes
Orestes Bronson
"Song of the Spinners" from the Lowell Offering
Record of the Organization and Proceedings of The...
Massachusetts Lawmakers Investigate Working Condit...
State (Colonial) Legislatures>Massachusetts State Legislature
Seneca Falls Resolutions
Women's Rights Convention
Time Table for Lowell Mills
Marriage Protest
Henry Blackwell
San Francisco Vigilance Committee
Consistent Democracy
Amasa Walker
The Significance of the Frontier in American Histo...
Frederick Jackson Turner
Federalism/Union
Speech on Preserving the Union
South Carolina's Ordinance of Nullification
Force Bill of 1833
Excerpts from Ratification Documents of Virginia a...
Ratifying Conventions>New York Ratifying Convention
McCulloch v. Maryland
An Address…Celebrating the Declaration of Independ...
Rough Draft of What is Called the South Carolina E...
State of the Union (1829)
Remarks in Congress on the "Tariff of Abominations...
Robert Y. Hayne
On the Nullifying Doctrine
Worcester v. Georgia
Proclamation Regarding Nullification
Epitaph for the Constitution
Lyrics to Jackson and the Nullifiers
Farewell Address (1837)
Fragment on Government
Speech on the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise
An Act to Organize the Territories of Nebraska and...
Letter to Henry L. Pierce, and Others
Letter to Henry Pierce and Others
The Dividing Line Between Federal and Local Author...
Marbury v. Madison
Letter to William Torrance
Veto of the Bank Bill
Reply to Jackson's Veto Message
Speech on the Mexican-American War
Missouri Compromise Act
Veto Message of the Bill on the Bank of the United...
Debate on the National Bank Filibuster
Voter Qualification Law
New Jersey State Legislature
Message to the Senate Protesting the Censure Resol...
Balloting for President
Speech on Assuming Office of the President
Religious Views: Letter to the Editor of the Illin...
Great Speech of Clay
The Seven Stages of the Office Seeker
Edward Williams Clay
Speech at a Republican Banquet
Letter to Lyman Trumbull
Democratic Party Platform 1860 (Douglas Faction)
(Northern) Democratic Party Platform Committee
Democratic Party Platform 1860 (Breckinridge Facti...
(Southern) Democratic Party Platform Committee
Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Societ...
The Commercial Greatness of the United States
Lowell Factory Girls Association
Special Message to Congress (Tyler Doctrine)
Estranged Labour and The Communist Manifesto
Frederick Engels
"The Ten Hour System"
Sarah G. Bagley
State of the Union Address Part II (1848)
The Destiny of America, Speech at the Dedication o...
What a Revival of Religion Is
Charles Finney
An Address. . .Celebrating theDeclaration of Indep...
Religious Experience
Baconianism and the Bible
Benjamin Morgan Palmer
The Revelation on Celestial Marriage: Trouble Amon...
Ann Eliza Young
Mormonism and Jesuitism
F.W. Gunsaulus
Breckinridge Faction
Speeches on the Removal Power
Hon. Francis O. J. Smith to Secretary of State Dan...
Francis O.J. Smith
Special Message to the House of Representatives
Special Message to Congress on Mexican Relations
Speech on the War with Mexico
Political Chart: Presidential Campaign
Defense and War
First Annual Message to Congress
War Message
Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper
Letter to the Editors of the National Intelligence...
Debate on the Constitutionality of the Mexican War
Market Speech
Recollections of the War
Letters and Journals from the Oregon Trail
Narcissa Whitman
Remarks at the Women's Rights Convention
Senator Timothy Pickering to President Thomas Jeff...
Timothy Pickering
The Embargo Act
President James Madison to Secretary of State Robe...
Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives
Annual Message The Monroe Doctrine
Selected Dispatches
Joel Poinsett
Correspondence Between Anthony Butler and Presiden...
Spot Resolutions in the U.S. House of Representati...
The Ostend Manifesto
Address to the People of the United States, by the...
Second Annual Message to Congress
Remarks in Congress on the "Tariff of Abominations"
by Robert Y. Hayne
Lincoln's Apple of Gold
ByEllen Tucker
Documents in Detail: Henry Clay's Market Speech
Because the government of the United States under the Constitution was designed to be neither wholly national nor wholly federal, the question of how much sovereignty was retained by each of the individual states vis-à-vis the national government remained unresolved even after ratification. Indeed, some states, like Virginia and New York, explicitly included provisions outlining the right of the people either organically, or through their state governments, to resume their political authority in the event the national government proved unable to affect the purposes for which it had been established. A less dramatic version of this understanding underlay the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves of 1798/1799. Authored by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, respectively, these documents upheld a robust vision of the states as constitutional interpreters, even (in the case of Kentucky) asserting that within its own borders, a state had the ability to nullify (or, in effect, to disregard) any federal law it believed to be unconstitutional. (Madison later disavowed nullification.)
Although the 1803 Marbury v. Madison decision helped claim for the Supreme Court the power to declare laws unconstitutional, the idea that the states had a legitimate ability to weigh in on the constitutionality of federal measures (previously manifested in the Hartford Convention) gained ground in the 1820s, particularly in the agricultural South, where people viewed national economic policies as unfairly partial toward northern manufacturing. South Carolinians took the lead in protesting the federal "tariff of abominations" in 1828.
President Andrew Jackson publicly refuted all arguments in favor of nullification, and brought a swift end to South Carolina's rhetorical rebellion by threatening to use military force against the state if it did not comply with federal law. Many Northerners believed that nullification was not only a philosophical absurdity, but also directly linked to the perpetuation of the institution of slavery. They applauded Jackson's actions as a defense of not only the Union, but also of freedom itself. The theory of state sovereignty at the heart of nullification continued to appeal to many Americans and contributed to the deepening divide between northerners and southerners during the antebellum period, leading at least one pessimistic wag to pen an "Epitaph for the Constitution" in which he (or she) imagined the issue leading to the collapse of the Union.
The Webster-Hayne Debate on the Nature of the Constitution: Selected Documents, ed. Herman Belz (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000). 3/26/2018. Available online at: https://goo.gl/7Pbesa. Robert Y. Hayne (1791–1839) was a U.S. senator from South Carolina.
. . . [W]e ask nothing of our Northern brethren but to "let us alone;" leave us to the undisturbed management of our domestic concerns, and the direction of our own industry, and we will ask no more. . . .
The honorable gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Webster1] while he exonerates me personally from the charge, intimates that there is a party in the country who are looking to disunion. . . . Sir, when the gentleman provokes me to such a conflict, I meet him at the threshold. I will struggle while I have life, for our altars and our fire sides, and if God gives me strength, I will drive back the invader discomfited. Nor shall I stop there. If the gentleman provokes the war, he shall have war. Sir, I will not stop at the border; I will carry the war into the enemy's territory, and not consent to lay down my arms, until I shall have obtained "indemnity for the past, and security for the future."2 It is with unfeigned reluctance that I enter upon the performance of this part of my duty. I shrink almost instinctively from a course, however necessary, which may have a tendency to excite sectional feelings, and sectional jealousies. But, sir, the task has been forced upon me, and I proceed right onward to the performance of my duty; be the consequences what they may, the responsibility is with those who have imposed upon me this necessity. . . .
Who, then, Mr. President, are the true friends of the Union? Those who would confine the federal government strictly within the limits prescribed by the constitution – who would preserve to the States and the people all powers not expressly delegated – who would make this a federal and not a national Union – and who, administering the government in a spirit of equal justice, would make it a blessing and not a curse. And who are its enemies? Those who are in favor of consolidation; who are constantly stealing power from the States and adding strength to the federal government; who, assuming an unwarrantable jurisdiction over the States and the people, undertake to regulate the whole industry and capital of the country. . . .
The Senator from Massachusetts, in denouncing what he is pleased to call the Carolina doctrine, has attempted to throw ridicule upon the idea that a State has any constitutional remedy by the exercise of its sovereign authority against "a gross, palpable, and deliberate violation of the Constitution." He called it "an idle" or "a ridiculous notion," or something to that effect; and added, that it would make the Union "a mere rope of sand". . . .
Sir, as to the doctrine that the Federal Government is the exclusive judge of the extent as well as the limitations of its powers, it seems to be utterly subversive of the sovereignty and independence of the States. It makes but little difference, in my estimation, whether Congress or the Supreme Court, are invested with this power. If the Federal Government, in all or any of its departments, are to prescribe the limits of its own authority; and the States are bound to submit to the decision, and are not to be allowed to examine and decide for themselves, when the barriers of the Constitution shall be overleaped, this is practically "a Government without limitation of powers;" the States are at once reduced to mere petty corporations, and the people are entirely at your mercy. I have but one word more to add. In all the efforts that have been made by South Carolina to resist the unconstitutional laws which Congress has extended over them, she has kept steadily in view the preservation of the Union, by the only means by which she believes it can be long preserved – a firm, manly, and steady resistance against usurpation. The measures of the Federal Government have, it is true, prostrated her interests, and will soon involve the whole South in irretrievable ruin. . . .
. . . It cannot be doubted, and is not denied, that before the formation of the constitution, each State was an independent sovereignty, possessing all the rights and powers appertaining to independent nations; nor can it be denied that, after the constitution was formed, they remained equally sovereign and independent, as to all powers, not expressly delegated to the Federal Government. This would have been the case even if no positive provision to that effect had been inserted in that instrument. But to remove all doubt it is expressly declared, by the 10th article of the amendment of the constitution, "that the powers not delegated to the States, by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.". . .
The whole form and structure of the Federal Government, the opinions of the framers of the Constitution, and the organization of the State Governments, demonstrate that though the States have surrendered certain specific powers, they have not surrendered their sovereignty. . . .
No doubt can exist, that, before the States entered into the compact, they possessed the right to the fullest extent, of determining the limits of their own powers – it is incident to all sovereignty. Now, have they given away that right, or agreed to limit or restrict it in any respect? Assuredly not. They have agreed, that certain specific powers shall be exercised by the Federal Government; but the moment that Government steps beyond the limits of its charter, the right of the States "to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits the authorities, rights, and liberties, appertaining to them,"3 is as full and complete as it was before the Constitution was formed. It was plenary then, and never having been surrendered, must be plenary now.
The gentleman has made an eloquent appeal to our hearts in favor of union. Sir, I cordially respond to that appeal. I will yield to no gentleman here in sincere attachment to the Union, – but it is a Union founded on the Constitution, and not such a Union as that gentleman would give us, that is dear to my heart. If this is to become one great "consolidated government," swallowing up the rights of the States, and the liberties of the citizen, "riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman, and beggared yeomanry,"4 the Union will not be worth preserving. Sir, it is because South Carolina loves the Union, and would preserve it forever, that she is opposing now, while there is hope, those usurpations of the Federal Government, which, once established, will, sooner or later, tear this Union into fragments. . . .
1. Daniel Webster (1782–1852) was a lawyer, U.S. senator from Massachusetts and a secretary of state.
2. A phrase used subsequently in American history with regard to Mexico and the defeated South, which appears to have originated in British Parliamentary debate with reference to Britain's attitude toward the American colonies.
3. A quotation from the Virginia Resolves, written by James Madison.
4. A quotation from a letter of Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, (December 26, 1825) criticizing a consolidated federal government.
CIRCULAR: Addressed to Benevolent Ladies of the United States