ich will require standing armies to
suppress them in one place and another, where they may
happen to arise. Or, if laws could be made adapted to the
local habits, feelings, views, and interests of those
distant parts, would they not cause jealousies of partiality
in government, which would excite envy and other malignant
passions productive of wars and fighting? But should we
continue distinct sovereign States, confederated for the
purpose of mutual safety and happiness, each contributing to
the federal head such a part of its sovereignty as would
render the government fully adequate to those purposes and
_no more_, the people would govern themselves more easily,
the laws of each State being well adapted to its own genius
and circumstances, and the liberties of the United States
would be more secure than they can be, as I humbly conceive,
under the proposed new constitution."--_Life of Samuel
Adams_, Vol. III, p. 251.

This passage is one of the large number in the writings of that time
to which recent events have given a new interest; nor is it now
without salutary meaning for us, though we quote it only to show the
reluctance of some of the best citizens of the North to come into a
national system. Suppose, to-day, that the United States were invited
to merge their sovereignty into a confederation of all the nations of
America, which would require us to abolish the city of Washington, and
send delegates to a general congress on the Isthmus of Darien! A
sacrifice of pride like that was demanded of the leading States of the
Union in 1787. Severe was the struggle, but the sacrifice was made,
and it cost the great States of the North as painful a throe as it did
the great States of the South. Why, then, has State pride died away in
the North, and grown stronger in the South? Why is it only in the
Southern States that the doctrine of States' Rights is ever heard of?
Why does the Northern man swell with national pride, and point with
exultation to a flag bearing thirty-seven stars, feeling the remotest
State to be as much his country as his native village, while the
Southern man contracts to an exclusive love for a single State, and is
willing to die on its frontiers in repelling from its sacred soil the
national troops, and can see the flag under which his fathers fought
torn down without regret?

The study of John Randolph of Virginia takes