At this early period the antagonism of the two schools of American politics was plainly discernible. The conflict of faith is easily indicated. The advocates of States' Rights regarded the Union as a _compact between the States_--something more than a mere league formed for purposes of mutual safety, but still a strictly _voluntary_ association of Sovereignties, in which certain general powers were specifically delegated to the Union; and all others not so delegated were reserved by the States in their separate characters. The advocates of Consolidation considered the Union a _National_ Government--in other words, a centralized power--to which the several States occupied the relation of separate provinces. The famous resolutions of '98, adopted respectively by the Virginia and Kentucky Legislatures, were the formal declarations of principles upon which the States' Rights party was distinctly organized under Mr. Jefferson, whom it successfully supported for the Presidency against the elder Adams at the expiration of the term of the latter. With the progress of time the practical significance of these opposing principles became more and more apparent, and their respective followers strove, with constantly-increasing energy, to make their party creed paramount in the policy of the Government. A majority of the Northern people embraced the idea of a perpetual Union, whose authority was supreme over all the States, and regulated by the will of a numerical majority, which majority, it should be observed, they had already secured, and were yearly increasing in an enormous ratio. The South, in the course of years, with even more unanimity, clung to the idea of State Sovereignty, and the interpretation of the Government as one of limited powers, as its shield and bulwark against the Northern majority in the collision which it was foreseen the aggressive spirit of the latter would eventually occasion.