Thus, whether we regard the large powers vested in Congress, the powers denied to the States absolutely, the powers denied to the States without the consent of Congress, or those other provisions which accord supremacy to the United States, we shall find the pretension of State sovereignty without foundation, except in the imagination of its partisans.  Before the Constitution such sovereignty may have existed; it was declared in the Articles of Confederation; but since then it has ceased to exist.  It has disappeared and been lost in the supremacy of the National Government, so that it can no longer be recognized.  Perverse men, insisting that it still existed, and weak men, mistaking the shadow of former power for the reality, have made arrogant claims in its behalf.  When the Constitution was proclaimed, and George Washington took his oath to support it as President, our career as a Nation began, with all the unity of a nation.  The States remained as living parts of the body, important to the national strength, and essential to those currents which maintain national life, but plainly subordinate to the United States, which then and there stood forth a Nation, one and indivisible.

MISCHIEFS IN THE NAME OF STATE RIGHTS.

But the new government had hardly been inaugurated before it was disturbed by the pestilent pretension of State Rights, which, indeed, has never ceased to disturb it since.  Discontent with the treaty between the United States and Great Britain, negotiated by that purest patriot, John Jay, under instructions from Washington, in 1794, aroused Virginia, even at that early day, to commence an opposition to its ratification, in the name of State Rights.  Shortly afterwards appeared the famous resolutions of Virginia and those of Kentucky, usually known as the “Resolutions of ’98,” declaring that the National Government was founded on a compact between the States, and claiming for the States the right to sit in judgment on the National Government, and to interpose, if they thought fit; all this, as you will see, in the name of State Rights.  This pretension on the part of the States increased, till, at last, on the mild proposition to attach a prospective prohibition of Slavery as a condition to the admission of Missouri into the Union as a new State, the opposition raged furiously, even to the extent of menacing the existence of the Union; and this, too, was done in the name of State Rights.  Ten years later, the pretension took the familiar form of Nullification, insisting that our government was only a compact of States, any one of which was free to annul an act of Congress at its own pleasure; and all this in the name of State Rights.  For a succession of years afterwards, at the presentation of petitions against Slavery,—­petitions for the recognition of Hayti,—­at the question of Texas,—­at the Wilmot Proviso,—­at the admission of California as a Free State,—­at