The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States, Vol. 2 of 2 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States, Vol. 2 of 2

As, under this view, the Constitution exhibits less of the character of positive law and. More that of a treaty, the legis lative and executive functionaries of States, in both sections, have, at the same time, been induced more and more to claim cognizance of matters arising under those parts of the Con stitution which, in effect, are most international. Hence, in the application of these provisions of the fourth Article to the relations of private persons, the legislative, executive, and judicial functions in the several State governments, instead of being combined in their ordinary co-ordinate action, have been more and more involved as competitors, - each in turn seeming to assume an incongruous prominence in asserting the interests of private persons as matters in which the States themselves were the parties claiming rights of and owing obligations towards each other as such.

It is in the agitation of The Slavery Question, almost ex elusively, that those doctrines of State sovereignty have, dur ing the last thirty years, been exhibited, upon which practical secession is claimed to be legitimate public action; and as those who were most opposed in their moral and political preferences in respect to slavery were at the same time hmost in harmony on this subject, in view of totally different ends, it could be no occasion for surprise if these doctrines had been found to have gained greatly in acceptance, during that agitation, in the Northern as well as in the Southern States.

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