5. To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws
of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions.
'16. To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the
militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in
the service of the United States, reserving to the States
respectively the appointment of the officers, and the authority of
training the militia, according to the discipline proscribed by
Congress.
'18. To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for
carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers
vested by this Constitution in the government of the United
States, or in any department or officer thereof.'
The first two words in this section--'the Congress'--completely annul
the separate integrity of States. The Congress of what, and for what?
The Congress of the UNITED STATES, acting for the UNITED States, as a
UNIT, a WHOLE, a UNION. The only allusion in this section to any thing
like a right existing in any State after the adoption of the
Constitution, is the right to officer the militia, and these officers
are to 'train' the militia, _under the direction of Congress_, and not
under State laws--a clause which of itself strikes a decisive blow at
the theory of independent State rights. In no one of these
specifications is there a single allusion to any 'State.' Every power
enumerated is given to the '_United_ States,' to the 'Union' formed by
virtue of the Constitution. Never was there a more perfect absorption of
atoms into one mass, than in these specifications; but to make the
principle still stronger, and as if to remove any doubt as to 'State
rights,' the first clause of the Ninth Section of the same Article
expressly prohibits any State from importing certain persons after a
given date, which, when it arrived, (in 1808,) Congress passed a
national law stopping the slave-trade--a trade that some of the States
would have been glad to encourage, or at least, allow, if they had had
authority to do so. This right was taken from them by the Constitution,
in the year 1808; up to that time they had that right; but after that
date the right no longer existed, and Congress passed the law referred
to, in accordance with the power given them by this clause of the
Constitution.
But this First Article of Section Nine is not all in that section that
smothers State rights; for Article Five declares that
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