The citizen who
can help his countrymen to do this will render them an important
service and deserve well of his country, though he may have been
unable to serve in her armies and defend her on the battle-field.
The work now to be done by American statesmen is even more
difficult and more delicate than that which has been accomplished
by our brave armies. As yet the people are hardly better
prepared for the political work to be done than they were at the
outbreak of the civil war for the military work they have so
nobly achieved. But, with time, patience, and good-will, the
difficulties may be overcome, the errors of the past corrected,
and the Government placed on the right track for the future.
It will hardly be questioned that either the constitution of the
United States is very defective or it has been very grossly
misinterpreted by all parties. If the slave States had not held
that the States are severally sovereign, and the Constitution of
the United States a simple agreement or compact, they would never
have seceded; and if the Free States had not confounded the Union
with the General government, and shown a tendency to make it the
entire national government, no occasion or pretext for secession
would have been given. The great problem of our statesmen has
been from the first, How to assert union without consolidation,
and State rights without disintegration? Have they, as yet,
solved that problem? The war has silenced the State sovereignty
doctrine, indeed, but has it done so without lesion to State
rights? Has it done it without asserting the General government
as the supreme, central, or national government? Has it done it
without striking a dangerous blow at the federal element of the
constitution? In suppressing by armed force the doctrine that
the States are severally sovereign, what barrier is left against
consolidation? Has not one danger been removed only to give
place to another?
But perhaps the constitution itself, if rightly understood,
solves the problem; and perhaps the problem itself is raised
precisely through misunderstanding of the constitution.
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