’9.  To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court.

    ’10.  To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the
    high seas, and offenses against the law of nations.

    ’11.  To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and
    make rules concerning captures on land and water.

    ’12.  To raise and support armies; but no appropriation of money
    to that use shall be for a longer term than two years.

    ’13.  To provide and maintain a navy.

    ’14.  To make rules for the government and regulation of the land
    and naval forces.

    ’15.  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.