econd Bank of the United States, whose branch Maryland was now
trying to tax, received its charter in 1816 from President Madison.
Well might John Quincy Adams exclaim that the "Republicans had
out-federalized the Federalists!" Yet the gibe was premature.
The country at large was as yet blind to the responsibilities of
nationality. That vision of national unity which indubitably underlies
the Constitution was after all the vision of an aristocracy conscious of
a solidarity of interests transcending state lines. It is equally true
that until the Civil War, at the earliest, the great mass of Americans
still felt themselves to be first of all citizens of their particular
States. Nor did this individualistic bias long remain in want of
leadership capable of giving it articulate expression. The amount of
political talent which existed within the State of Virginia alone in the
first generation of our national history is amazing to contemplate,
but this talent unfortunately exhibited one most damaging blemish. The
intense individualism of the planter-aristocrat could not tolerate in
any possible situation the idea of a control which he could not himself
ultimately either direct or reject. In the Virginia and Kentucky
resolutions of 1798 and 1799, which regard the Constitution as a compact
of sovereign States and the National Government merely as their agent,
the particularistic outlook definitely received a constitutional creed
which in time was to become, at least in the South, a gloss upon
the Constitution regarded as fully as authoritative as the original
instrument. This recognition of state sovereignty was, indeed, somewhat
delayed by the federalization of the Republican party in consequence of
the capture of the National Government by Virginia in 1800. But in
1819 the march toward dissolution and civil war which had begun at the
summons of Jefferson was now definitely resumed. This was the year of
the congressional struggle over the admission of Missouri, the most
important result of which was the discovery by the slave owners that the
greatest security of slavery lay in the powers of the States and that
its greatest danger lay in those of the National Government. Henceforth
the largest property interest of the country stood almost solidly behind
State Rights.

It was at this critical moment that chance presented Marshall with the
opportunity to place the opposing doctrine of nationalism on the high
plane of judicial dec