ut of reasonable legislation.

While Marshall was performing this service in behalf of representative
government, he was also aiding the cause of nationalism by accustoming
certain types of property to look upon the National Government as their
natural champion against the power of the States. In this connection it
should also be recalled that Gibbons vs. Ogden and Brown vs. Maryland
had advanced the principle of the exclusiveness of Congress's power
over foreign and interstate commerce. Under the shelter of this
interpretation there developed, in the railroad and transportation
business of the country before the Civil War, a property interest almost
as extensive as that which supported the doctrine of State Rights. Nor
can it be well doubted that Marshall designed some such result or that
he aimed to prompt the reflection voiced by King of Massachusetts on the
floor of the Federal Convention. "He was filled with astonishment that,
if we were convinced that every man in America was secured in all his
rights, we should be ready to sacrifice this substantial good to the
phantom of STATE sovereignty."

Lastly, these decisions brought a certain theoretical support to the
Union. Marshall himself did not regard the Constitution as a compact
between the States; if a compact at all, it was a compact among
individuals, a social compact. But a great and increasing number of his
countrymen took the other view. How unsafe, then, it would have been
from the standpoint of one concerned for the integrity of the Union, to
distinguish public contracts from private on the ground that the former,
in the view of the Constitution, had less obligation!

CHAPTER VII. The Menace Of State Rights

Marshall's reading of the Constitution may be summarized in a phrase: it
transfixed State Sovereignty with a two-edged sword, one edge of which
was inscribed "National Supremacy," and the other "Private Rights."
Yet State Sovereignty, ever reanimated by the democratic impulse of the
times, remained a serpent which was scotched but not killed. To be sure,
this dangerous enemy to national unity had failed to secure for
the state Legislatures the right to interpret the Constitution with
authoritative finality; but its argumentative resources were still far
from exhausted, and its political resources were steadily increasing.
It was still capable of making a notable resistance even in withdrawing
itself, until it paused in its recoil and flung itsel