s theirs; and these things held them together by the force of
a common character. The aggressions of the parent state compelled them
to assert their independence. They declared independence, and that
immortal act, pronounced on the 4th of July, 1776, made them
independent.

That was an act of union by the United States in Congress assembled. But
this act of itself did nothing to establish over them a general
government. They had a Congress. They had Articles of Confederation to
prosecute the war. But thus far they were still, essentially, separate
and independent each of the other. They had entered into a simple
confederacy, and nothing more. No State was bound by what it did not
itself agree to, or what was done according to the provisions of the
confederation. That was the state of things, Gentlemen, at that time.
The war went on; victory crowned the American arms; our independence was
acknowledged. The States were then united together under a confederacy
of very limited powers. It could levy no taxes. It could not enforce its
own decrees. It was a confederacy, instead of a united government.
Experience showed that this was insufficient and inefficient.
Accordingly, beginning as far back almost as the close of the war,
measures were taken for the formation of a united government, a
government in the strict sense of the term, a government that could pass
laws binding on the individual citizens of all the States, and which
could enforce those laws by its executive powers, having them
interpreted by a judicial power belonging to the government itself, and
yet a government strictly limited in its nature. Well, Gentlemen, this
led to the formation of the Constitution of the United States, and that
instrument was framed on the idea of a limited government. It proposed
to leave, and did leave, the different domestic institutions of the
several States to themselves. It did not propose consolidation. It did
not propose that the laws of Virginia should be the laws of New York, or
that the laws of New York should be the laws of Massachusetts. It
proposed only that, for certain purposes and to a certain extent, there
should be a united government, and that that government should have the
power of executing its own laws. All the rest was left to the several
States.

We now come, Gentlemen, to the very point of the case. At that time
slavery existed in the Southern States, entailed upon them in the time
of the supremacy of Britis