versions of the Constitution will be promulgated to meet the varying course of political events or aspirations of power." ¹ Milton vs. New York, 11 Peters, 102. ² Briscoe vs. Bank of Kentucky, 11 Peters, 257. ³ Charles River Bridge Company vs. Warren Bridge Company, 11 Peters, 420. 4 He wrote Justice McLean, May 10, 1837: "There will not, I fear, even in our day, be any case in which a law of a State or of Congress will be declared unconstitutional; for the old constitutional doctrines are fast fading away." Life and Letters of Joseph Story, vol. II, p. 272; see also p. 270, for Chancellor Kent's unfavorable reaction to these decisions. But the radical impulse soon spent itself. Chief Justice Taney himself was a good deal of a conservative. While he regarded the Supreme Court rather as an umpire between two sovereignties than as an organ of the National Government for the vigorous assertion of its powers, which was Marshall's point of view, Taney was not at all disposed to disturb the law as it had been declared by his predecessor in binding decisions. Then, too, the development of railroading and the beginning of immigration from Europe on a large scale reawakened the interest of a great part of the nation in keeping intercourse between the States untrammeled by local selfishness; and in 1851 the Court, heeding the spirit of compromise of the day, decisively accepted for the most important category of cases Marshall's principle of the exclusive control of interstate and foreign commerce by Congress. ¹ ¹ Cooley vs. the Board of Wardens, 12 Howard, 299. Still, until the eve of the Civil War, the theory of the Constitution held by the great body of the people, North as well as South, was that it was a compact of States. Then in December, 1860, South Carolina announced her secession from the Union. Buchanan's message of the same month performed the twofold service of refuting secession on State Rights principles and of demonstrating, albeit unwittingly, how impossible it was practically to combat the movement on the same principles. Lincoln brought the North back to Marshall's position when he remarked in his Inaugural Address: "Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever."