_The Value of our Union_ as THE KEY-STONE OF STATE AUTHORITY, and of all that may be legitimately included under the idea of State sovereignty. Who shall estimate it in this respect? We are too much inclined to regard our general government, as in some respects, a foreign one, as something outside of our proper nationality, as an external band, or wrapper, that may be loosened without much danger, rather than what it really is, or, at least has become in time, a _con-necting_, interweaving, all-pervading principle, constituting not merely a _sum_ of adjacent _parts_, but a _whole_ of organic _membership_; so that a severance would not leave merely disintegrated fractions, possessing each the same vitality it would have had, or might once have had, if there had never been such membership. The wound could not be inflicted without a deep, and, perhaps, deadly injury, not only to the life of the whole, as a whole, but to the vital forces through which the lower and smaller sections of each several member may have been respectively bound into political unities. It is true, our general government had a peculiar origin, and stands, _in time_, subsequent to the State authorities. It might seem, therefore, to some, to derive its life from them, instead of being itself a proper fountain of vitality. This is _chronologically_ true; but such an inference from it would be _logically_ false, and could only proceed from a very superficial study of the law of political organisms. Whatever may have been the origin of the parts, or the original circumstances of their union, we must now regard the body that has grown out of them as a living organic whole, which can not suffer without suffering throughout. It is _alive all over_, and you can put the amputating knife in no place without letting out some of the life-blood that flows in each member, and in every fibre of each member. It had, indeed, its origin in the union of the parts, but its vital principle has modified the parts, and modified their life, so that you can not now hurt it, or kill it, without producing universal pain and universal death. Nor was such union either arbitrary or accidental. Our general political organization was as naturally born out of the circumstances in which we were placed, as our several State polities grew out of the union of the feeble and varied sources in which they had their historical origin. The written Constitution declarative of the national coalescence (or _growing together_) only expressed an _effect_, instead of constituting a cause.