,
fellow-servants of the same masters--uncontrolled within their respective
spheres, uncontrollable by encroachments on each other. If there have been
those who doubted whether a confederated representative democracy was a
Government competent to the wise and orderly management of the common
concerns of a mighty nation, those doubts have been dispelled. If there
have been projects of partial confederacies to be erected upon the ruins
of the Union, they have been scattered to the winds. If there have been
dangerous attachments to one foreign nation, and antipathies against
another, they have been extinguished. Ten years of peace at home and
abroad have assuaged the animosities of political contention, and blended
into harmony the most discordant elements of public opinion. There still
remains one effort of magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and passion,
to be made by the individuals throughout the nation who have heretofore
followed the standards of political party. It is that of discarding every
remnant of rancor against each other, of embracing, as countrymen and
friends, and of yielding to talents and virtue alone that confidence
which, in times of contention for principle, was bestowed only upon those
who bore the badge of party communion.

"The collisions of party spirit, which originate in speculative opinions,
or in different views of administrative policy, are in their nature
transitory. Those which are founded on geographical divisions, adverse
interests of soil, climate, and modes of domestic life, are more
permanent, and therefore, perhaps, more dangerous. It is this which gives
inestimable value to the character of our Government, at once federal and
national. It holds out to us a perpetual admonition to preserve, alike,
and with equal anxiety, the rights of each individual State in its own
Government, and the rights of the whole nation in that of the Union.
Whatever is of domestic concernment, unconnected with the other members
of the Union, or with foreign lands, belongs exclusively to the
administration of the State Governments. Whatsoever directly involves the
rights and interests of the federative fraternity, or of foreign powers,
is, of the resort of this General Government. The duties of both are
obvious in the general principle, though sometimes perplexed with
difficulties in the detail. To respect the rights of the State Governments
is the inviolable duty of that of the Union: the Government of e