This Irishman's unionism is a fair sample of what sometimes passes in this country as broad patriotism. "We don't believe in so much State and State's right. We want a nation and we want it spelt with a big N." This is the merest twaddle. From the very nature of the formation of our government there can be no organized Nation. Alexander Hamilton wrote, "The State governments are essentially necessary to the form and spirit of the general system. * * * They can never lose their powers till the whole of America are robbed of their liberties." It is a Union of States and can be made nothing else. Bancroft, the great historian, says: "But for Staterights the Union would perish from the paralysis of its limbs. The States, as they gave life to the Union, are necessary to the continuance of that life." Madison wrote as follows: "The assent and ratification of the people, not as individuals composing the entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they belong, are the sources of the Constitution. It is therefore not a National but a Federal compact." The Irishman could only belong to the "whole of 'em" by belonging to one of them. No man can love all the other States without loving his own State. A Swiss loves Schwyz or Unterwalden or some other canton before he loves the Confederation of Cantons. The loyal Scotchmen love Scotland before they love the British Empire. The Union man loves the Union through his immediate part of Union. Daniel Webster loved the Union, but his speeches show how he loved Massachusetts first. Calhoun loved the Union, but he loved it as a Federal Union with his beloved Carolina. Many of the best people of the North loved their several States and in loyalty to them took sides against the South. The Southern people, Whigs and Democrats, were devoted to the Union of the fathers as long as it was a reality. But as soon as they realized that it had become only a confederation of the Northern majority States, with the protecting features of the old Constitution directly discarded, the love for their own States led them heart and soul into the Confederate cause. Our Irishman might be satisfied with A Union, but nothing but THE Union of the fathers could satisfy Southern men. They loved the definite Union of 1789; they fought the indefinite Union of 1861. The former was a union on a Constitution without a flag; the latter was a mere sentimental union under a flag without a Constitution. The Constitution had been thrown away.