they made a most
significant alteration. The corresponding clause in the Constitution of
the Southern Confederacy ran, "We, _the deputies of the Sovereign and
Independent States_, ... do ordain," etc., etc.

For the rest two great practical measures which involved no overbold
challenge to State Sovereignty were wisely planned to buttress the Union
and render it permanent. A clause in the Constitution forbade tariffs
between the States and established complete Free Trade within the limits
of the Union. An even more important step was that by which the various
States which claimed territory in the as yet undeveloped interior were
induced to surrender such territory to the collective ownership of the
Federation. This at once gave the States a new motive for unity, a
common inheritance which any State refusing or abandoning union must
surrender.

Meanwhile it would be unjust to the supporters of State Rights to deny
the excellence and importance of their contribution to the
Constitutional settlement. To them is due the establishment of local
liberties with safeguards such as no other Constitution gives. And, in
spite of the military victory which put an end to the disputes about
State Sovereignty and finally established the Federalist interpretation
of the Constitution, this part of their work endures. The internal
affairs of every State remain as the Constitution left them, absolutely
in its own control. The Federal Government never interferes save for
purposes of public taxation, and, in the rare case of necessity, of
national defence. For the rest nine-tenths of the laws under which an
American citizen lives, nearly all the laws that make a practical
difference to his life, are State laws. Under the Constitution, as
framed, the States were free to form their separate State Constitutions
according to their own likings, and to arrange the franchise and the
test of citizenship, even for Federal purposes, in their own fashion.
This, with the one stupid and mischievous exception made by the
ill-starred Fifteenth Amendment, remains the case to this day, with the
curious consequence, among others, that it is now theoretically possible
for a woman to become President of the United States, if she is the
citizen of a State where female suffrage is admitted.

Turning to the structure of the central authority which the Constitution
sought to establish, the first thing that strikes us--in the teeth of
the assertion of most British