In the fall of 1859 I took an active part in the political campaign that resulted in the election of Samuel J. Kirkwood for Governor and the defeat of Augustus Ceasar Dodge, former democratic Senator from Iowa. As I had become interested in and contemplated taking an active part in the politics of the state and nation, I occupied my leisure time in more serious and thoughtful consideration of the grave questions that were soon to confront the nation. I read with great interest and studied with great care the debates between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln that had taken place in the state of Illinois, and the struggle between those parties for a seat in the United States senate. I also read with some care and great interest the great questions that had divided those who had framed the constitution of the United States. I became thoroughly grounded in the theory that our fathers in forming our national constitution had established a government with all the essential attributes of sovereignty. Whilst there is a limitation upon the subjects over which the government should exercise jurisdiction, yet within the sphere over which it might exercise any power it was absolutely sovereign and supreme; that the constitution was not a compact or treaty between sovereign states, but that it was a government, deriving its powers directly from the people, with power to make its own laws and through its courts to interpret and administer its own laws, and through its executive and his appointees had the power to execute its own laws; that the relation between the national government and the individual was direct, with power over his person and his property so far as it was necessary to assert and maintain its jurisdiction; and that it collected and disbursed its own revenues, enlisted and maintained its own armies, built and maintained its own navies, and that its constitution and laws, by the very terms of its organization, constituted the supreme law of the land. That the assumption that it was a mere treaty between the sovereign states, from which any state might at any time secede at its pleasure, was an erroneous assumption, and inimical to our national existence and prosperity. I found upon examination of the decisions of the supreme court of the United States that these views of our national government and its powers had been fully sustained by the supreme court of the United States by the most eminent jurists of the land. Particularly I studied with great care the decisions of the supreme court of the United States, and the opinions of the Chief Justice Marshall of that court, delivered in the early history of our government.