... Any government for the United States, formed on the
supposed practicability of using force against the unconstitutional
proceedings of the States, would prove as visionary and fallacious as
the government of Congress."[97] Every proposition looking in any way to
the same or a similar object was promptly rejected by the convention.
George Mason, of Virginia, said of such a proposition: "Will not the
citizens of the invaded State assist one another, until they rise as one
man and shake off the Union altogether?"[98]

Oliver Ellsworth, in the ratifying Convention of Connecticut, said:
"This Constitution does not attempt to coerce _sovereign bodies,
States_, in their political capacity. No coercion is applicable to such
bodies but that of an armed force. If we should attempt to execute the
laws of the Union by sending an armed force against a delinquent State,
it would involve the good and bad, the innocent and guilty, in the same
calamity."[99]

Mr. Hamilton, in the Convention of New York, said: "To coerce the States
is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised.... What picture
does this idea present to our view? A complying State at war with a
non-complying State: Congress marching the troops of one State into the
bosom of another ... Here is a nation at war with itself. Can any
reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and
carnage the only means of supporting itself--a government that can exist
only by the sword?... But can we believe that one State will ever suffer
itself to be used as an instrument of coercion? The thing is a dream--it
is impossible."[100]

Unhappily, our generation has seen that, in the decay of the principles
and feelings which animated the hearts of all patriots in that day, this
thing, like many others then regarded as impossible dreams, has been
only too feasible, and that States have permitted themselves to be used
as instruments, not merely for the coercion, but for the destruction of
the freedom and independence of their sister States.

Edmund Randolph, Governor of Virginia, although the mover of the
original proposition to authorize the employment of the forces of the
Union against a delinquent member, which had been so signally defeated
in the Federal Convention, afterward, in the Virginia Convention, made
an eloquent protest against the idea of the employment of force against
a State. "What species of military coercion," said he, "could the
General G