We shall do well not to forget the words of that staunch upholder of national power and authority, Salmon P. Chase, speaking as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in a famous case growing out of the Civil War:[1] The preservation of the states, and the maintenance of their governments, are as much within the design and care of the Constitution as the preservation of the Union and the maintenance of the National Government. The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible states. [Footnote 1: _Texas v. White_, 7 Wall., 700.] IV THE EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT Could Washington, Madison, and the other framers of the Federal Constitution revisit the earth in this year of grace 1922, it is likely that nothing would bewilder them more than the recent Prohibition Amendment. Railways, steamships, the telegraph, the telephone, automobiles, flying machines, submarines--all these developments of science, unknown in their day, would fill them with amazement and admiration. They would marvel at the story of the rise and downfall of the German Empire; at the growth and present greatness of the Republic they themselves had founded. None of these things, however, would seem to them to involve any essential change in the beliefs and purposes of men as they had known them. The Prohibition Amendment, on the contrary, would evidence to their minds the breaking down of a principle of government which they had deemed axiomatic, the abandonment of a purpose which they had supposed immutable. As students of the science of government they would realize that the most fundamental change which can overtake a free people is a change in their frame of mind, for to that everything else must sooner or later conform. The amendment was proposed by Congress in 1917 and proclaimed as having been ratified in 1919.[1] [Footnote 1: 40 Stat. 1050, 1941.]