federation there was no general and
permanent standard by which decisions could be made and preserved.
Everything was made to depend on the irresponsible and often conflicting
action of the States, or on the unauthoritative determination of the
congressional commission. To remedy this defect, and make more complete
the national character of our present Government, a judicial power of
the United States was vested in the Supreme Court, and in such inferior
courts as Congress may establish. This Supreme Court, with original
jurisdiction in all cases affecting foreign nations, and in all cases in
which a State shall be a party, and with appellate jurisdiction in other
cases, is at once a final tribunal for inter-State disagreement, and a
representative to the world of an united nation, having an individual
existence, and capable of performing all the functions of an individual
nation.

We have thus traced the main lines of difference between the Articles of
Confederation and the Constitution, and have seen that the latter was
meant to be, and is the organic law of a developed and completed
nationality. Under it, every one of us becomes an American citizen,
exercising, as is right, certain local privileges, and dependent for
their immediate protection on the State authorities, but possessing
other wider and nobler rights, which inhere in him as a citizen of the
United States, and which are asserted and supported by the power and
dignity of the entire nation. No words can more fully express the lofty
majesty of that state of nationality on which we have entered, never,
under God, to fall from it, than those of the Constitution itself, to
support which every member of every government, the local as well as the
national, is bound by solemn oath. 'This Constitution, and the laws of
the United States made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made under
the authority of the United States, shall be the SUPREME LAW OF THE
LAND, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary
notwithstanding.'

Before such words as these, binding these States together as one nation,
whose integrity nothing but treason would seek to destroy or weaken, the
fierce invective of the Southern, and the feeble sophistry of the
Northern traitor shrink to insignificance. They are at once the record
and the prophecy of our success, declaring the foundation on which the
Government is based, and pointing to yet greater glories to be attained