Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/337

A NEW NATION, 3^9 A NEW NATION. "T^VERYTHING gravitates to Washington: the highest in- J— -/ terests and the most absorbing ambitions look to the Na- tional capital for gratification ; and it is no longer the State, but the Nation, that in men's minds and imaginations is an ever present sovereignty. . . . We may preserve the Constitution in its every phrase and every letter with only such modification as was found essential for the uprooting of slavery; but the Union as it was has given way to a new Union, with some new and grand fea- tures, but also with some engrafted evils which only time and the patient and persevering labors of statesmen and patriots will suffice to eradicate." ^ " There has grown up a pride in the National Flag and in the National Government as representing National Unity. ... As the modes in and by which these and other similar causes can work are evidently not exhausted, it is clear that the development of the Constitution as between the Nation and the States, has not yet stopped, and present appearances suggest that the centralizing tendency will continue to prevail/' ^ The above cited statements were written and published nearly ten years ago, but the centralizing tendencies therein noted have not ceased, and it would be easy to-day to glean from recent publi- cations, including the daily newspaper, citations of a similar purport sufficient of themselves to make a magazine article. The purpose, however, of the present inquiry is not so much to note the changes in public sentiment which have been going on, as it is to consider from a legal standpoint what changes have of recent years, as a matter of fact, taken place in the framework of the National Government. It is a matter of history, and is well understood, that after the close of the late Civil War there was a reconstruction (more or less under National supervision) of the State Governments in those States which had sought to terminate the Union. This fact is so widely known, and was so prominent a feature 1 Cooley, History of Michigan, p. 371 (1885). 2 Bryce, The American Commonwealth, Vol. I. p. 394.