Let me be understood. I suggest no interference with the just rights of the States. These belong to the harmonies of the Union. But, in the name of Justice, I insist that nothing further shall be done to invest the States with peculiar local power. If not taught by the lessons of the late war, then be taught by the principles avowed at the very beginning of the Government. The object of the Constitution was to ordain, under authority of the people, a national government possessing unity and power. The Confederation had been merely an agreement “between the States,” styled “a league of firm friendship.” Found to be feeble and inoperative, through the pretension of State Rights, it gave way to the Constitution, which, instead of a “league,” created a “Union” in the name of the people of the United States. Beginning with these inspiring and enacting words, “We, the people,” it was popular and national. Here was no concession to State Rights, but a recognition of the power of the people, from whom the Constitution proceeded. The States are acknowledged; but they are all treated as component parts of the Union in which they are absorbed under the National Constitution, which is the supreme law. There is but one sovereignty, and that is the sovereignty of the people of the United States. On this very account the adoption of the Constitution was opposed by Patrick Henry and George Mason. The first pronounced: “That this is a consolidated government is demonstrably clear.” “The question turns on that poor little thing, the expression, ‘We, the people,’ instead of ‘the States’ of America.”[246] The second exclaimed: “Whether the Constitution be good or bad, the present clause [‘We, the people’] clearly discovers that it is a national government, and no longer a confederation.”[247] But against this powerful opposition the Constitution was adopted in the name of the people of the United States. Throughout the discussion, State Rights were treated with little favor. Madison said, the States were “only political societies,” and “never possessed the essential rights of sovereignty.”[248] Gerry said, the States had “only corporate rights.”[249] Wilson, the philanthropic member from Pennsylvania, afterward a learned judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, and author of the “Lectures on Law,” said: “Will a regard to State Rights justify the sacrifice of the Rights of Men? If we proceed on any other foundation than the last, our building will neither be solid nor lasting.”[250] Such were the voices at that heroic day. And now, at the end of an unparalleled war to abase State Rights, we are asked to naturalize in the Constitution a new provision confirming to the States an odious pretension, shocking to the moral sense. But its character belongs to another head. * * * * *