64 Southern Historical Society Papers.
powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the peo- ple of the United States, may be resumed whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression."
The resolution of adoption by the New York convention is of very much the same import. These two States also proposed amend- ments to the Constitution, which were quickly ratified and made a part of the instrument itself. The amendment bearing specifically upon the point under consideration, was the loth, which expressly provides ' ' That the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Thus, with the very adoption of the Constitution, the position maintained by the states- men that the Constitution was a compact between States, was estab- lished, as they thought, beyond a question.
If it was a compact between separate sovereignties, and the com- pact enumerated all the powers surrendered to the federal head, then the parties to the compact could withdraw as an incident to their sovereignly, and because that right had not been surrendered. The citizen, as we know, was the citizen of the State, and not of the Union. If the State had a right to secede, it had the supreme claim upon the allegiance of all its citizens, even in a controversy between the State and the federal head.
POSITION OF THE FOUNDERS.
This was the position of the advocates of the right of secession, and the reasoning upon which they based their claim. The princi- ple so declared, had been frequently asserted by States and states- men, in the most solemn manner. Thus, upon the passage of the Alien and Sedition laws, the celebrated resolutions of 1798 were adopted by the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia the first of which was prepared by Jefferson, and the second by Madison. These resolutions, thus prepared by the author of the Declaration of Inde- pendence and the father of the Constitution, asserted in the most solemn form that the government was a compact between States; that its powers were limited to those specifically delegated in the Constitution; and that the States had the right to determine for themselves when the Federal government exceeded its authority.
These declarations became the subject of assault and defence, but so far from the principles annunciated being repudiated, at the very next election, Mr. Jefferson was elected President of the United
