Excerpt from The Right of the Territories to Become States of the Union

The conflict of opinion regarding the nature of the American Union was settled by the Civil war. Many held before that time, that the Nation was the result of a compact entered into by free and independent States, which, while recognizing the Constitution as a common bond of union, yet left to each State as a part of an inherent sovereignty, the right either to nullify a national obligation or to withdraw without the circle of national influence and power.

This conception of the Union, which is known as the states-rights doctrine, was adopted by the Southern States and their deliberate acts of secession were the immediate cause of the Civil war and all its attending disasters.

But with the defeat of the South, the dogma of states-rights perished. Henceforth the Constitution is to be viewed, not as a compact between sovereign States, but as the fundamental law of the whole land - as the expression of the will of the entire Nation - and arguments relating to it must be based upon that fundamental conception.

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