This was essential; it was necessary; it was a step
which had to be taken first, before any progress could be made. It was
the essential requisite of the very idea of sovereignty in the State; of
a compact voluntarily entered into between sovereigns; and it is that
equality of right under the Constitution on which we now insist. But
more: when the States united they transferred their forts, their
armament, their ships, and their right to maintain armies and navies, to
the Federal Government. It was the disarmament of the States, under the
operation of a league which made the warlike operations, the powers of
defense, common to them all. Then, with this equality of the States,
with this disarmament of the States, if there had been nothing in the
Constitution to express it, I say the protection of every constitutional
right would follow as a necessary incident, and could not be denied by
any one who could understand and would admit the true theory of such a
Government.
We claim protection, first, because it is our right; secondly, because
it is the duty of the General Government; and, thirdly, because we have
entered into a compact together, which deprives each State of the power
of using all the means which it might employ for its own defense. This
is the general theory of the right of protection. What is the exception
to it? Is there an exception? If so, who made it? Does the Constitution
discriminate between different kinds of property? Did the Constitution
attempt to assimilate the institutions of the different States
confederated together? Was there a single State in this Union that would
have been so unfaithful to the principles which had prompted them in
their colonial position, and which had prompted them, at a still earlier
period, to seek and try the temptations of the wilderness; is there one
which would have consented to allow the Federal Government to control or
to discriminate between her institutions and those of her confederate
States?
But, if it be contended that this is argument, and that you need
authority, I will draw it from the fountain; from the spring before it
had been polluted; from the debates in the formation of the
Constitution; from the views of those who at least it will be admitted
understood what they were doing.
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