History of the United StatesBeard, Charles A. (Charles Austin)
History
History of the United States
Beard, Charles A. (Charles Austin)
United States -- History
=The Doctrine of Implied Powers.=--While restraining Congress in the
Marbury case and the state legislatures in a score of cases, Marshall
also laid the judicial foundation for a broad and liberal view of the
Constitution as opposed to narrow and strict construction. In McCulloch
_vs._ Maryland, he construed generously the words "necessary and proper"
in such a way as to confer upon Congress a wide range of "implied
powers" in addition to their express powers. That case involved, among
other things, the question whether the act establishing the second
United States Bank was authorized by the Constitution. Marshall answered
in the affirmative. Congress, ran his reasoning, has large powers over
taxation and the currency; a bank is of appropriate use in the exercise
of these enumerated powers; and therefore, though not absolutely
necessary, a bank is entirely proper and constitutional. "With respect
to the means by which the powers that the Constitution confers are to be
carried into execution," he said, Congress must be allowed the
discretion which "will enable that body to perform the high duties
assigned to it, in the manner most beneficial to the people." In short,
the Constitution of the United States is not a strait jacket but a
flexible instrument vesting in Congress the powers necessary to meet
national problems as they arise. In delivering this opinion Marshall
used language almost identical with that employed by Lincoln when,
standing on the battle field of a war waged to preserve the nation, he
said that "a government of the people, by the people, for the people
shall not perish from the earth."
SUMMARY OF THE UNION AND NATIONAL POLITICS
During the strenuous period between the establishment of American
independence and the advent of Jacksonian democracy the great American
experiment was under the direction of the men who had launched it. All
the Presidents in that period, except John Quincy Adams, had taken part
in the Revolution. James Madison, the chief author of the Constitution,
lived until 1836. This age, therefore, was the "age of the fathers." It
saw the threatened ruin of the country under the Articles of
Confederation, the formation of the Constitution, the rise of political
parties, the growth of the West, the second war with England, and the
apparent triumph of the national spirit over sectionalism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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