EGISLATURES, and all executive and
judicial officers, both of the United States and of the SEVERAL
STATES, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this
Constitution.'

This Constitution, these laws, these treaties, _shall be the supreme
law_, no matter what 'State' constitutions and 'State' laws may declare.
'Shall!' is the word, and there can be no doubt as to its meaning.
Again, members of the State Legislatures, and all officers of the
several States 'shall' be bound to support the 'Constitution.' Where are
the 'State rights' in these clauses? Every State and every State
official is made subordinate to and an executive of the acts of the
'United States,' and the United States constitutes a '_nation_'. That is
the only word which meets our case. WE ARE A NATION, not 'a
tenant-at-will sort of confederacy.'

The waters of the Bay of New-York and of the Hudson river flow entirely
within the States of New-York and New-Jersey. One of the vested rights
of an independent state, is that known as 'eminent domain,' or supreme
ownership, implying control. Apply this doctrine of State rights in this
case, or rather, allow it to be applied by the States named above, and
they could prevent the navigation of these waters by any but their own
citizens or those to whom they might grant that privilege. If this
doctrine of State rights is sound, these two States would have the right
to levy tolls or duties on every vessel that sails those waters, as the
State of New-York exacts tolls on her canals. Such power thus exercised,
would cripple commerce, inconvenience the public, and utterly destroy
all comity between the States. This exacting tolls for navigation of
waters is one of the most offensive systems left us by past generations.
It is so odious that modern governments decline to submit to it in cases
where there is no doubt as to 'State rights,' as in that of the 'Sound
Dues' exacted by Denmark. If, however, the State is supreme within its
limits, it has a perfect right to exact such tolls. But no State in this
nation has any such right under the Constitution. Its existence would
destroy the Union by placing each State under the laws and exactions of
either one of the others. The troubles growing out of such exactions
would beget dispute; these disputes would beget open strife, which would
end in open rupture and the downfall of the NATIONAL UNION.

The 'UNITED STATES,' 'the Union,' 'the Nation,' are _supreme_