II. For the purposes of domestic government the Federal authority is now, in ordinary times, sufficiently strong. However, as was remarked in last chapter, there have been occasions when the resistance of even a single State disclosed its weakness. Had a man less vigorous than Jackson occupied the presidential chair in 1832, South Carolina would probably have prevailed against the Union. In the Kansas troubles of 1855-56 the national executive played a sorry part; and even in the resolute hands of President Grant it was hampered in the re-establishment of order in the reconquered southern States by the rights which the Federal Constitution secured to those States. The only general conclusion on this point which can be drawn from history is that while the central government is likely to find less and less difficulty in enforcing its will against a State or disobedient subjects, because the prestige of its success in the Civil War has strengthened it, and the facilities of communication make the raising and moving of troops more easy, nevertheless recalcitrant States, or groups of States, still enjoy certain advantages for resistance, advantages due partly to their legal position, partly to their local sentiment, which rebels might not have in unified countries like England, France, or Italy.
III. Everybody knows that it was the Federal system and the doctrine of State sovereignty grounded thereon, and not expressly excluded, though certainly not recognized, by the Constitution, which led to the secession of 1861, and gave European powers a plausible ground for recognizing the insurgent minority as belligerents. Nothing seems now less probable than another secession, not merely because the supposed legal basis for it has been abandoned, and because the advantages of continued union are more obvious than ever before, but because the precedent of the victory won by the North will discourage like attempts in the future.[1] This is so strongly felt that it has not even been thought worth while to add to the Constitution an amendment negativing the right to secede. The doctrine of the legal indestructibility of the Union is now
- ↑ The Roman Catholic cantons of Switzerland (or rather the majority of them) formed a separate league (the so-called Sonderbund) which it needed the war of 1847 to put down. And the effect of that war was, as in the parallel case of America, to tighten the Federal bond for the future.
