The second Bank of the United States, whose branch Maryland was now trying to tax, received its charter in 1816 from President Madison. Well might John Quincy Adams exclaim that the "Republicans had outfederalized the Federalists!" Yet the gibe was premature. The country at large was as yet blind to the responsibilities of nationality. That vision of national unity which indubitably underlies the Constitution was after all the vision of an aristocracy conscious of a solidarity of interests transcending state lines. It is equally true that until the Civil War, at the earliest, the great mass of Americans still felt themselves to be first of all citizens of their particular States. Nor did this individualistic bias long remain in want of leadership capable of giving it articulate expression. The amount of political talent which existed within the State of Virginia alone in the first generation of our national history is amazing to contemplate, but this talent unfortunately exhibited one most damaging blemish. The intense individualism of the planter-aristocrat could not tolerate in any possible situation the idea of a control which he could not himself ultimately either direct or reject. In the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 and 1799, which regard the Constitution as a compact of sovereign States and the National Government merely as their agent, the particularistic outlook definitely received a constitutional creed which in time was to become, at least in the South, a gloss upon the Constitution regarded as fully as authoritative as the original instrument. This recognition of state sovereignty was, indeed, somewhat delayed by the federalization of the Republican party in consequence of the capture of the National Government by Virginia in 1800. But in 1819 the march toward dissolution and civil war which had begun at the summons of Jefferson was now definitely resumed. This was the year of the congressional struggle over the admission of Missouri, the most important result of which was the discovery by the slave owners that the greatest security of slavery lay in the powers of the States and that its greatest danger lay in those of the National Government. Henceforth the largest property interest of the country stood almost solidly behind State Rights.