and exercise proper care
for the welfare of a people, must have homogeneity in its constituents.
It is this necessity which has divided the human race into separate
nations, and finally has defeated the grandest efforts which conquerors
have made to give unlimited extent to their domain. When our fathers
dissolved their connection with Great Britain, by declaring themselves
free and independent States, they constituted thirteen separate
communities, and were careful to assert and preserve, each for itself,
its sovereignty and jurisdiction.

At a time when the minds of men are straying far from the lessons our
fathers taught, it seems proper and well to recur to the original
principles on which the system of government they devised was founded.
The eternal truths which they announced, the rights which they declared
"_unalienable_," are the foundation-stones on which rests the
vindication of the Confederate cause.

He must have been a careless reader of our political history who has not
observed that, whether under the style of "United Colonies" or "United
States," which was adopted after the Declaration of Independence,
whether under the articles of Confederation or the compact of Union,
there everywhere appears the distinct assertion of State sovereignty,
and nowhere the slightest suggestion of any purpose on the part of the
States to consolidate themselves into one body. Will any candid,
well-informed man assert that, at any time between 1776 and 1790, a
proposition to surrender the sovereignty of the States and merge them in
a central government would have had the least possible chance of
adoption? Can any historical fact be more demonstrable than that the
States did, both in the Confederation and in the Union, retain their
sovereignty and independence as distinct communities, voluntarily
consenting to federation, but never becoming the fractional parts of a
nation? That such opinions should find adherents in our day, may be
attributable to the natural law of aggregation; surely not to a
conscientious regard for the terms of the compact for union by the
States.

In all free governments the constitution or organic law is supreme over
the government, and in our Federal Union this was most distinctly marked
by limitations and prohibitions against all which was beyond the
expressed grants of power to the General Government. In the foreground,
therefore, I take the position that those who resisted violations of the
co