Thus it was supposed that the two great
sectional interests would be enabled to restrain each other within the
limits of purposes and action beneficial to both.
The failure of these expectations need not affect our reverence for the
intentions of the fathers, or our respect for the means which they
devised to carry them into effect. That they were mistaken, both as to
the maintenance of the balance of sectional power and as to the fidelity
and integrity with which the Congress was expected to conform to the
letter and spirit of its delegated authority, is perhaps to be ascribed
less to lack of prophetic foresight, than to that over-sanguine
confidence which is the weakness of honest minds, and which was
naturally strengthened by the patriotic and fraternal feelings resulting
from the great struggle through which they had then but recently passed.
They saw, in the sufficiency of the authority delegated to the Federal
Government and in the fullness of the sovereignty retained by the
States, a system the strict construction of which was so eminently
adapted to indefinite expansion of the confederacy as to embrace every
variety of production and consequent diversity of pursuit. Carried out
in the spirit in which it was devised, there was in this system no
element of disintegration, but every facility for an enlargement of the
circle of the family of States (or nations), so that it scarcely seemed
unreasonable to look forward to a fulfillment of the aspiration of Mr.
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