The Creature of the Sovereign States

I am continually amazed while reading books written by those people who were actually there during the events in our nations history, how they describe the beauty of the way our government is suppose to function. How completely misled and mis-taught we have been in our own country about our own history is heart-breaking. This quote is a little lengthy, but I believe very important and relevant today, seeing that the Founders were trying to avoid the type of authoritarian government we now have and how our own government breaks its own rule of law everyday. I also believe more and more that it is our duty, especially if we are believers in Christ, to understand how our governments are supposed to function. I would try to sum up this quote, but it is so simple and straight to the point that I thought it speaks for itself. R.L. Dabney, while writing about Gen. Stonewall Jackson and his political views as a 'States Rights Democrat' says this:

"This name did not denote the attachment of those who bore it to the dogmas of universal suffrage and radical democracy, as concerned the State Governments; but their advocacy of republican rights for these Governments, and a limited construction of the powers conferred by them on the Federal Government. Their view of those powers was founded on the following historical facts, which no well-informed American hazards his credit of disputing: - That the former colonies of Great Britain emerged from the Revolutionary War distinct and sovereign political communities or commonwealths, in a word, separate nations, though allied together, and as such were recognized by all the European powers: That, after some years' existence as such, they voluntarily formed a covenant, called the Constitution of the United States, which created a species of government resting upon this compact for its existence and rights; a government which was the creature of the sovereign States, acting as independent nations in forming it: That this compact conferred certain defined powers and duties upon the Central Government, for purposes common to all the States alike, and expressly reserved and prohibited the exercise of all other powers, leaving to the States the management of their own affairs. They, therefore, did not sacrifice their nature as sovereignties, by acceding to the Federal Union; but, by compact, they conceded some of the functions of an independent nation, particularly defined, to the Central Government, retaining all the rest as before. These facts and this inference were uniformly held by the Commonwealth of Virginia at all times, being solemnly asserted when she joined the copartnership, and frequently reaffirmed by her Government down to the present day. They were, in substance, embodied in the Constitution of the United States itself, by a formal amendment, immediately after it went into effect. Since the era of the elder Adams, when the centralizing doctrine was utterly overwhelmed by the election of Mr. Jefferson, they have been professed in theory, though often violated in act, by every Administration of whatever party it might be, and by nearly every State."

"The party of the States'-Rights usually taught, from these principles, that the Federal Government ought to continue what it was in the purer days of Washington and Jefferson, unambitious in its claims of jurisdiction, simple and modest in its bearing, restricted in its wealth and patronage, and economical of expenditures, save in the common defense against external enemies. They held that all acts of legislation which interfered with those functions appropriate to the States as Commonwealths, and all those acts which turned aside from the general interests common to the States alike, to promote particular or local interests, were partial, usurping, and in virtual violation of the spirit of the Constitution. Among these, they classed all bounty laws designed to favor the inhabitants of a section, all protective tariffs, the chartering of a vast Banking Corporation in one of the States, and all meddling with the institution of domestic slavery in the States. They also held that the very Government, being the creation of commonwealths which acted as independent nations in forming it, and originating in a covenant which they voluntarily formed as such, derived its whole authority from its conformity to the terms of that covenant: that, if the covenant were destroyed, the Government was destroyed, and its rightful title of allegiance from any person was annihilated- that being gone which was the sole basis of it; and that, in the dernier ressort upon any vital instance of usurpation, the States themselves must be the judges whether the covenant was destroyed, and judges too of the necessity and nature of their redress. This right, to be exercised, indeed, under those moral obligations which should govern all international intercourse, they held to be inherent in the States as originally sovereign; while to suppose their federal compact divested them of it was preposterous, and what was, in the nature of the case, impossible. It would represent their voluntary act in acceding to the covenant as a political suicide. And it would have been equally preposterous for the Federal Constitution formally to confer it; it would have been the absurdity of the offspring's attempting to confer on its own parent the rights of paternity. Hence the absolute silence of the Federal Constitution concerning this inalienable right of the States was logically consistent, and is as incapable of implying anything against, as for, its just exercise." -R.L. Dabney

Quote is from Life and Campaigns of Lt. Gen. Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson by R. L. Dabney