g of the motives and character of the Southern people as
distinguished from their politicians, is the doctrine of State Rights.
On this topic also Mr. Greeley furnishes all the data requisite to a
full understanding of the matter. The dispute resolves itself
substantially into this: whether the adoption of the Constitution
established a union or a confederacy, a government or a league, a
nation or a committee. This also is a question which can only be
determined by a knowledge of what the Convention of 1787 intended and
accomplished, and the States severally acceded to,--it being of course
understood that no State had a right, or at the time pretended any
right, to accept the Constitution with mental reservations. On this
subject we have ample and unimpeachable testimony in the discussions
which led to the calling of the Convention, and the debates which
followed in the different conventions of the States called together to
decide whether the new frame of government should be accepted or
rejected. The conviction that it was absolutely necessary to remodel
the Articles of Confederation was wrought wholly by an experience of
the inadequacy of the existing plan (under which a single State could
oppose its veto to a law of Congress), from, the looseness of its
cohesion and its want of power to compel obedience. The principle of
coercive authority, which was represented as so oppressively
unconstitutional by the friends of Secession in the North as well as
the South four years ago, was precisely that which, as its absence had
brought the old plan to a dead-lock, was deemed essential to the new.
The formal proposal for a convention, originated by Hamilton, was
seconded by one State after another. Here is a sample of Virginian
public sentiment at that time, from the "instructions to their
representatives," by several constituencies: "Government without
coercion is a proposition at once so absurd and self-contradictory that
the idea creates a confusion of the understanding; it is form without
substance, at best a body without a soul." Oliver Ellsworth, advocating
the adoption of the Constitution in the Convention of Connecticut,
says: "A more energetic system is necessary. The present is merely
advisory. It has no coercive power. Without this, government is
ineffectual, or rather is no government at all." Earlier than this
Madison had claimed "an implied right of coercion" even for the
Confederate Congress, and Jefferson had gon