ward and southward, but never returning. Out of these diverse and hostile alluviums Nature has built the great races that we have seen in modern times in Europe.

Of the other mode, early Rome was an example. In the first years of her history, Italy was filled with petty states, among which Rome was but prima inter pares. As they grew, jealousies led to border wars, in which that single city long maintained a doubtful conflict with neighbors too nearly her equals to be completely subdued. As Rome waxed great, and the privileges of her citizenship became more and more highly prized, what her arms alone had failed to accomplish, she did by her policy; she absorbed the neighboring tribes into her own organization, and thus, from one of the loosest, became one of the compactest and most enduring nationalities that the world has

ever seen.

Such is the method of Nature in the genesis of nations; beginning with elements diverse and discordant, she ends by kneading them into likeness and unity.

It should be noted, too, that whether this process be slow or rapid, the nature of the result is the same. Thus, what Rome was many centuries in accomplishing, under the circumstances that surrounded her - barbaric populations on all sides, want of roads, of facilities for education, of a sufficient public revenue, of nearly every thing that gives impulse to national growth, - a people, however heterogeneous, endowed with steam, in its thousand applications, with the telegraph, the printing-press, and, above all, with that modern spirit, which is fruitful of great enterprises, in all departments of human endeavor, under circumstances the most adverse, would be able to achieve in a few decades of years.

Now, the conditions presented by the United States were, in our early history, similar to those of Rome. Our land was dotted over with isolated communities, that had sprung up here and there sporadically, as chance had led to settlement. Growing from remote and too frequently hostile societies, out into the presence of each other, what affinities they had, from identity of race, laws, literature, and religion, and from similarity of circumstances and condition with respect to European nations, were set actively at work, as also their mutual repulsions.

But there was this difference between America and Rome,

the latter arose slowly, and with struggles tedious and endless, ages before the birth of Christ; the former sprang up two thousand years later, after the life and teachings of that Divine personage had fruited into the institutions of our time, when, as compared with that of Rome, a day, in its actual achievement, is as a thousand years.

In this manner and under these influences, the United States have become what we see. Whether the result has been to make of them a nation, is the question. So far as the method of their development is concerned, there are furnished, I think, affirmative indications.

§ 34. When we look closely at the successive steps by which we came to be what we are, the probability that we have ripened into a nation is much increased.

The most prominent characteristic of American constitutional history, is a constant and impressible tendency toward union.

Including the crowning act, by which the people of the United States crushed the attempt at disunion in 1861-5, there have been taken in our history eight capital steps toward the consummation of a complete national union. These occurred in 1643, in 1754, in 1765, in 1774, in 1775, in 1781, in 1789, and 1861-5. Comparing these steps with one another, there is visible in them a steady progress in two particulars: first, in the number of the colonies or States participating in them; and, secondly, in the scope of the successive schemes of union, the establishment of which was sought or accomplished by them respectively.

1. Thus, a scheme of union was formed in 1643 by four colonies; in 1754, by seven; in 1765, by nine; in 1774, by twelve ; in 1775, by thirteen, the last two resulting in the revolutionary congresses preceding the confederation; in 1781, by thirteen, with great reluctance establishing the confederation; in 1789, by thirteen, with less reluctance-it may almost be said, with eagerness founding the present establishment; and in 1861-5, by twenty-five loyal, and a loyal minority in each of eleven disloyal States, by force of arms crushing the power of a faction seeking to destroy the Union.

2. Without particularizing the scope of each of these eight efforts at the consolidation of a union, with which all readers of our history are familiar, it is enough to observe, that the first

was a simple league of four New England colonies against the Indians, and their hostile neighbors, the Dutch; the two following were similar in their general purpose, but broader in intent and compass; the next two, as explained above, were broader still, embracing practically the entire continent, and being designed to engineer the contest with Great Britain; the sixth was the first formal and regular attempt to establish a government for united America, but undertaken with such fear and jealousy, that the system established stood only so long as it was held together by pressure from without; the seventh was an abandonment of the idea of confederation, and the introduction of the conception of a national government, framed by the people of the United States, the several State governments being at the same time shorn of much of their former power, and relegated to the secondary position held by them as colonies under the Crown. The last, supreme step was that in which two million men in arms have, in our day, stamped with condemnation the heresy of secession, and denied the rightfulness of disunion either as fact or as theory; thus giving to that series of acts and charters by which the rights of the colonies were defined and guaranteed, a practical construction, and justifying the inference, that union- the consolidation of the various communities forming the United Colonies into one people, one nation — was at once the purpose of God, and the design, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously entertained, of the men of all times in America.

§ 35. Every step of our progress from 1643 to 1865 being upon convergent lines, of which the point of meeting would be a perfected union, in my judgment, when the Constitution of 1789 was ratified, if not before, we became that which, on the 4th of July, 1776, we had declared ourselves to be," one people" or nation, free and independent. Then, at the latest, the bundle of States, loosely bound together by the Articles of Confederation, emerged into view as a political society, and, as such, assumed the power of ordaining a government for itself, as well as for its members, before that claiming to be sovereign. Certainly, if the process of fusion, which a century and a half had been carrying on, had not then become complete, the conditions necessary for its ultimate completion had been supplied, the collective society having been placed in such bonds and subjected to such influ

ences that the process must go on, and that rapidly. These bonds, every year of the union has seen growing stronger and stronger. Beginning, as we have seen, with the same blood, language, religion, and civilization, with a love of the same liberties, with a unanimous voice for the same republican forms, with a compact territory, and a recognized name abroad only as a Union, to these there have been added the bonds of nearly a century of associated life, to say nothing of wars prosecuted together and shedding a common glory over that Union, for whose defence or enlargement they have been waged. All these, it seems, whatever we may have been when we started in the race, ought to have left us a nation, in heart and affection, as they have in fact and in law.

§ 36. The next fact to which I shall advert, as furnishing a ground of inference that we are a nation, is, that the Constitution of 1787 was ratified by the people of the United States; in this respect violating the law and departing from the precedents previously in force.

By the thirteenth of the Articles of Confederation, it had been provided, that no alteration of said articles should at any time thereafter be made, unless such alteration should be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and "be afterwards confirmed by the legislature of every State." That is, by the Federal Constitution, in force when the present one was formed, no change could be made in the provisions of the former, but by the action of the State governments, that is, of the States, considered as political organizations. This important constitutional interdict the Convention of 1787, for reasons deemed adequate, disregarded. It provided for the ratification of the proposed Constitution by Conventions of the people to be called in the several States by the legislatures thereof; that is, for its ratification by the people of the United States, acting, as was alone possible, in groups of such size as to be not inconvenient, and so arranged that advantage could be taken of the existing electoral machinery, which belonged exclusively to the States. This method was wholly new, and involving, as it clearly did, a violation of the Articles of Confederation, must have been adopted, because it was thought absolutely necessary to bring forward the Constitution just matured under wholly new conditions; to base it, not upon the States, but upon the broader and more solid foun

dation of the people of the United States, conceived of no longer as a cluster of badly cohering populations, but as a majestic unit, which, having emerged into existence, had at last compelled its own general and public recognition. Such is the lesson to be learned from the mode of ratification of the present Constitution.

§ 37. It must be admitted, that a different view has been taken of the bearing of the mode of ratifying the Federal Constitution on the question of our nationality. The political school, of which Mr. Jefferson was the founder, and Mr. Calhoun the great apostle and expositor, known as the "States Rights School," have deduced their favorite dogma of the sovereignty of the States, from the alleged ratification of the Constitution by the States; the argument being, that what the States formed and established they may, for reasons deemed to be sufficient, abrogate and annul. This school, admitting that the Constitution was required by its terms to be ratified by Conventions of delegates "chosen in each State by the people thereof," that is, by the people of the United States, considered as gathered into groups, by States, nevertheless maintain that, as a majority of the voices in each group or State was made requisite to its adoption, and not simply a majority of the aggregate of all the groups, the ratification must be considered substantially as pronounced by the States.

The reply is, that a majority of each State's electors, rather than of the aggregate of the electors of the Union, was required, not out of respect for the rights of the States, or with a view to found the new system upon the States, but to conform, as nearly as might be, to the positive requirements of the existing Constitution. The thirteenth of the Articles of Confederation required all alterations therein to be recommended by Congress and to be confirmed by the legislature of each State. Now, two difficulties were apprehended in attempting to conform strictly to this requirement. First, it was doubted whether a unanimous vote of all the States could be secured for the proposed plan. Hence it was provided by the Convention - Article VII. of the new Constitution that the ratification of the Constitution by nine States should be sufficient for the establishment thereof between the States so ratifying the same. Secondly, it was feared that reluctance to surrender the reins of power, now in their hands,