What is Our Constitution, League, Pact, Or Government?: Two Lectures on the Constitution of the United States Concluding a Course on the Modern State, Delivered in the Law School of Columbia College, During the Winter of 1860 and 1861, to which is Appended an Address on Secession Written in the Year 1851

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direction of the Board of Trustees, 1861 - Constitutional history - 48 pages
 

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Page 31 - Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.
Page 31 - Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate Union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns.
Page 21 - There are four things which I humbly conceive are essential to the -well-being, I may even venture to say to the existence, of the United States as an independent power.
Page 31 - Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct: and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.
Page 20 - The Continental Congress having now taken all the troops of the several colonies, which have been raised or which may be hereafter raised for the support and defence of the liberties of America, into their pay and service, they are now the troops of the UNITED PROVINCES OF NORTH AMERICA; and it is hoped, that all distinctions of colonies will be laid aside, so that one and the same spirit may animate the whole, and the only contest be, who shall render on this great and trying occasion the most essential...
Page 31 - Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment.
Page 31 - The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.
Page 31 - To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts, can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced.
Page 34 - Baldwin, Henry. A General View of the Origin and Nature of the Constitution and Government of the United States, Deduced from the Political History and Condition of the Colonies and States, from 1 774 until 1 788.
Page 18 - ... independent. Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this union by maintaining that each State is separately and individually independent as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses.

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