An effect of great civil commotions in the history of a people is to liberate reason, and to give to intelligence the opportunity to assert itself against the traditions and political idolatries of the past. Such a period is essentially one of political iconoclasm — the breaking of idols which we find we have heretofore unduly cherished, and with it the recovery from the delusions of an unworthy and traditional worship. When there is little in the present to interest men, and their lives are passed in an established routine, it is natural for them to exaggerate and to adorn the past. But when the present has its own historical convulsions, it is then that men find new standards with which to judge the past, and a period in which right to estimate it — destroying or dwarfing, it is true, much that before claimed their admiration or enchained their worship; but, on the other hand, ofttimes exalting what before had had an obscure and degraded place in popular estimation. It is in such periods that the native historian of his country finds the justest time for determining the correct value of the past, and distinguishing between what were its mere idols, and what should have been its true aspirations.
         It is thus, from the stand-point of the recent great war in America, that one may justly contemplate the true value of its past history, measure correctly its great men of a former period, and master the delusions of an old political idolatry. The world knows how before this war the people of North America had, for nearly three-quarters of a century, worshipped, as its two political idols, the Federal Constitution and the Union of States formed under it. Looking back at these from the present period in American history, which has freed us from the restraints of mere sentiment and tradition, he who thus makes the calm and intelligent retrospect is astonished to find what extravagance and delusion were in the minds of these worshippers, and what acts of devotion were made to what were ofttimes but gilded images of clay.
         For two generations of men, the almost miraculous wisdom of the Federal Constitution of America has been preached and exclaimed, until it was thought to be political blasphemy to impugn it. Its praises were hymned by poets. The public orator was listened to with impatience who had not some exaggerated tribute to pay to the sacred virtues of what Daniel Webster called the "consti-tew-tion," and the almost angelic excellence of "the forefathers" who had framed it. It was seriously asserted, that in this instrument had been combined the political wisdom of all ages, and that it was the epitome of the human science of government. The insolent heights to which this extravagance arose were astonishing. The world's last hopes of good government were said to be contained in these dozen pages of printed matter.
         Unhappily for such hopes, or for such boasts, we are now at a period when we may estimate the right value of this wonderful Constitution, and take the severe judgment of history upon it. We may now dare to state that judgment briefly: it is, that never did a political instrument contain, from the necessity of its circumstances, a nobler principle, or present the folly and ignorance of men in more glaring defects, than did the Federal Constitution of the United States.
         It is no longer required, by the political fashion of the times, for an American to say, that the men who formed this Constitution were either intellectual giants or wonderful scholars. Beyond a few names — such as Randolph and Patrick Henry, "the forest-born Demosthenes" of Virginia, Pinckney and Luther Martin, of Maryland, Hamilton, of New York, and Franklin, of Pennsylvania — the Convention which formed this instrument may be described as a company of very plain men, but little instructed in political science, who, in their debates, showed sometimes the crudities and chimeras of ignorant reform, and exhibited more frequently a loose ransacking of history for precedents and lessons, such as rather might have been expected in a club of college sophomores than in a council of statesmen.
         The two last names mentioned on the list of distinction in the Convention — Hamilton and Franklin — may be taken as examples of American exaggeration of their public men, which, indeed, more peculiarly belonged to the people of the Northern States — that division of the American people which after-events have classified as Yankees. Hamilton, who had a school of his own in the Convention, was readily exalted as an idol by the party which he so early begot in the history of his country. The man who was honored by pageants and processions in the streets of New York, at the close of the Convention, must be declared, by the just and unimpassioned historian, to have been superficial as a statesman, and defective as a scholar. He had, indeed, neither the intuition of genius, nor the power of analysis. He was a man of little mind. But he had studied a peculiar style of writing, which Washington was weak enough to take for a model, and, it is said, sometimes appropriated. There was no point or sharp edges in the style either of Alexander Hamilton or George Washington. Both wrote and spoke in those long sentences in which common places are pompously dressed up, and in which the sense is so overlaid with qualifications that it is almost impossible to probe it. But Washington made no pretensions to literature and scholarship, while Hamilton had no titles to fame other than these. And in these it must be confessed that he had scarcely any other merit than that of a smooth constructor of words, a character which with the vulgar often passes for both orator and statesman.
         Benjamin Franklin was thoroughly a representative Yankee, the first clear-cut type we recognize in history of that materialism, course selfishness, pelf, low cunning, and commercial smartness, which passes with the contemporary Yankee as the truest philosophy and highest aim of life. It is alike curious and amusing to examine the grounds of estimation in the minds of his countrymen, which conferred the high-sounding title of philosopher on an old gentleman in blue stockings, who, in France, was the butt of the Parisian wits, and who left a legacy of wisdom to posterity in the Maxims of Poor Richard. How many modern Yankees have been educated in the school of "maxims" of Franklin it would be difficult to over-estimate. If a gross and materialistic value of things is to pass as "philosophy"; if the hard maxims of selfishness, and the parings of penuriousness, such as Poor Richard dins to American youth, do really contain the true lessons and meaning of life, then we may declare, in the phrases of Yankee admiration, that Benjamin Franklin was a philosopher and a sage, who eclipsed all other lights in the world, and "whipped the universe." But really, after all, may we not doubt the value of this cookery-book philosophy of smart things; think it doubtful whether the mighty problem of how pence make pounds, be the largest or best part of human wisdom; and conclude that Benjamin Franklin, though not the greatest celebrity America has ever produced, was neither worse nor better than a representative Yankee.
         We are almost inclined to laugh at the part which this queer figure acted in the Convention which formed the Constitution of the United States. No member had more clap-traps in the way of political inventions. His ignorance of political science and of popular motives was alike profound; and we find him proposing to govern the country after a fashion scarcely less beautiful and less practicable than the Republic of Plato and the Arcadia of Sydney. He thought that magistrates might serve the public from patriarchal affection or for the honor of titles. He quoted in the Convention a maxim that sounds curiously enough to American ears: that "in all cases of public service, the less profit, the greater honor." He was in favor of the nonsense of a plural executive. He insisted in the Convention on the practicability of "finding three or four men in all the United States with public spirit enough to bear sitting in peaceful council, for perhaps an equal term, merely to preside over our civil concerns, and see that our laws were duly executed." Such was the political sagacity of this person, who, it must be confessed, made what reputation he had rather in the handbooks of Yankee economy than in monuments of statesmanship.
         But we shall find a better key to the real value of the Constitution in a summary review of its debates, than in a portraiture, however interesting, of the men who composed it. The Convention of delegates assembled from the different States at Philadelphia, on the second Monday in May, 1787, had met on a blind errand. They had been called by Congress, "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein, as shall, when agreed to in Congress and confirmed by the States, render the Federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union."
         This singularly confused language, in the call of the Convention, naturally gave rise to differences of opinion. One party in the Convention — representing what was known as the New Jersey proposition — took the ground that its power was limited to a mere revision and amendment of the existing Articles of Confederation: that it was, therefore, necessary to take the present federal system as the basis of action, to proceed upon terms of the federal equality of the States; in short, to remedy the defects of the existing government, not to supplant it. Hamilton and his party were for a new and violent system of reform. They were said to favor the establishment of a monarchy. The extent to which this was true is, that they were in favor of the annihilation of the State governments and the permanent tenure of public offices. A third party in the Convention avoided both extremes, insisted upon a change of the federal principle, and proposed a "national" government, in the sense of a supreme power with respect to certain objects common between the States, and committed to it, and which would have some kind of direct compulsory action upon individuals. The word "national" was used only in this limited sense. The great defect of the existing Confederation was, that it had no power to reach individuals, and thus enforce its decrees. The proposed Union, or "national" government, was to be a league of States, but with power to reach individuals; and yet these only in certain severely defined respects, and through powers expressly delegated by the States. In the nature of things, this power could not act upon the States collectively; that is, not in the usual and peaceful mode in which governments are conducted. All that was claimed for it, and all that could be claimed for it, was to reach individuals in those specifications of authority that the States should make to it.
         The plan of this party was no sooner developed in the Convention than it met the furious opposition of the smaller States. It was declared by Luther Martin, that those who advocated it "wished to establish such a system as could give their own States undue power and influence in the government over the other States." Both Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, and Mr. Pinckney, of Maryland, who had brought before the Convention drafts of the plan referred to, agreed that the members of the Senate should be elected by the House of Representatives; thus, in effect, giving to the larger States power to construct the Senate as they chose. Mr. Randolph had given additional offence to the smaller States. He proposed that, instead of an equal vote by States, "the right of suffrage in the National Legislature ought to be proportioned to the quotas of contribution, or to the number of free inhabitants."
         There was thus excited in the Convention a jealousy between the larger and smaller States; the former insisting upon a preponderating influence in both houses of the National Legislature, and the latter insisting on an equality of representation in each house. This jealous controversy is tracked through the debates of the Convention. It proceeded to a degree of warmth and anger in which the Convention was on the point of dissolution. When the vote was taken, five States were for an equality of representation and five against it. At this critical period, a conference committee was appointed. It resulted in a compromise; the opponents of an unequal representation agreeing to yield their objections to it in the lower House, provided its advocates would pledge themselves to support an equal representation in the Senate: and on this basis of agreement was reared the Constitution of the United States of America.
         The reader must observe here, that the great distinguishing feature of this Constitution, the peculiar virtue of the American system — namely, the mixed representation of the people and the States — was purely the result of a jealousy between the larger and the smaller States, the fruit of an accident. It contained the true virtue of a political instrument, which, as we shall see, was otherwise full of faults and glaring with defects. It was that in which it was original. But it was not an a priori discovery. It was not the result of the wisdom of our ancestors. History abounds in instances where accidental or empirical settlements have afterwards been discovered to contain great elements of wisdom and virtue; and it has been natural and pleasing for succeeding generations to account these rather as the result of human reason and prescience, than as the product of blind circumstances. But we are forced to confess, that in that great political novelty of the American system — in which the world was to see, for the first time combine and harmonized, the principle of geographical sovereignties with that of a confederate unity, which, for certain purposes, was to stand for national identity — the "wisdom" of our forefathers had no part, but acted unconsciously under the pressure of circumstances, or the direction of divine Providence.
         This statement is not pleasant to American vanity. But it is due to the truth of history. It is highly probable that the framers of the Constitution did not fully comprehend the importance of the principles of the combination of State sovereignty with that of the simple republic on which they had stumbled. If they had, it might be supposed that they would have defined with a much severer accuracy the political relations of the States and the General Government; for it has been for the want of such accuracy that room has been found, at least for disputation, and the creation of two political parties, which have run through the whole of American history.
         And here it is we must turn from the consideration of that principle in the Constitution which was its distinctive feature and its saving virtue, to view briefly the enormous defects and omissions of an instrument that has shared so much of the undue admiration of the world.
         It is impossible to resist the thought, that the framers of the Constitution were so much occupied with the controversy of jealousy between the large and the small States that they overlooked many great and obvious questions of government, which have since been fearfully developed in the political history of America. Beyond the results and compromises of that jealousy, the debates and the work of the Convention show one of the most wonderful blanks that has, perhaps, ever occurred in the political inventions of civilized mankind. They left behind them a list of imperfections in political prescience, a want of provision for the exigencies of their country, such as has seldom been known in the history of mankind.
         A system of negro servitude existed in some of the States. It was an object of no solicitude in the Convention. The only references in the Constitution to it are to be found in a provision in relation to the rendition of fugitives "held to service or labor," and in a mixed and empirical rule of popular representation. However these provisions may imply the true status of slavery, how much is it to be regretted that the Convention did not make (what might have been made so easily) an explicit declaration on the subject, that would have put it beyond the possibility of dispute, and removed it from even the plausibilities of party controversy!
         For many years the very obvious question of the power of the General Government to make "internal improvements" has agitated the councils of America; and yet there is no text in the Constitution to regulate the matter which should have stared its authors in the face, but what may be derived, by the most forced and distant construction, from the powers of Congress "to regulate commerce," and to "declare war," and "raise and support armies."
         For a longer period, and with a fierceness once almost fatal to the Union, has figured in the politics of America, "the tariff question," a contest between a party for revenue and a party for protective prohibitions. Both parties have fought over that vague platitude of the Constitution, the power of Congress "to regulate commerce"; and in the want of a more distinct language on a subject of such vast concern, there has been engendered a controversy which has progressed from the threshold of the history of the Union up to the period of its dissolution. With the territorial possessions of America, even at the date of the Convention, and with all that the future promised in the expansion of a system that yet scarcely occupied more than the water-slopes of a continent, it might be supposed that the men who formed the Constitution would have prepared a full and explicit article for the government of the territories. That vast and intricate subject — the power of the General Government over the territories, the true nature of these establishments, the status and political privileges of their inhabitants — is absolutely dismissed with this bald provision in the Constitution of the United States: "New States may be admitted by Congress into this Union" — Art. IV, Sec. 3.
         But however flagrant these omissions of the Constitution, and however through them sprung up much that was serious and deplorable in party controversy, we must lose neither sight nor appreciation of the one conspicuous and characteristic virtue of this instrument. That was the combination of State rights with an authority which should administer the common concerns of the States. This principle was involved in the construction of the Senate. It was again more fully and perfectly developed in the amendments of the Constitution; these amendments having a peculiarity and significance as parts of the instrument, since they were, in a certain sense, conditions precedent made by the States to their ratification of it. They provide: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." "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."
         It may be said, that whereas the element of the States was recognized in the construction of the Senate, that element was precisely adjusted and admeasured in the amendments which we have just quoted. In the debates in the legislatures of the different States on the ratification of the Constitution, it was never doubted that their original existence was already recognized in it; not only in the text of the instrument, but in the composition by States of the Convention that framed it, and in the ratification by States which was necessary to promulgate it, and give it force and existence. The design of the amendments referred to, was simply to adjust in the more precise language a vital and important element in the new system, and to declare formally what sense the States had of it, and with what understanding they approved it.
         But even if these official texts are — as a party in America has long contended — insufficient to establish the political element of the States, and to measure it as the depository of sovereignty by the rule of reserved rights, we are left a rule of construction as to the true nature of the American Union, which is completely out of the reach of any ingenious torture of language, and far above any art of quibble on words. That rule is found in the historical circumstances and exigencies in which the Constitution of the United States was formed. It is decisive. For surely there is no juster measure of a grant of political power than the necessity which originated it, if that necessity be at once intelligible and precise.
         Such was the necessity which originated the Constitution of the United States. It was a necessity for purely economical purposes. It could not have been intended as a revolution in the sense of a proclamation of new civil polity; for the civil institutions of the States, as derived from the common law of England, were already perfect and satisfactory, and have remained without material change for nearly a century. The Constitution of the United States was thus not a political revolution. It was a convenience of the States, growing out of their wants of a system by which they might have a common agent and a uniform code on concerns common between themselves. Is it too much to conclude, therefore, that the new Union had no mission apart from the States; that it was the government of the States; that, in short, it could not have been intended to destroy the very bodies which invoked it as a benefactor to each as well as to all?
         It is in this sense that the moral grandeur of the American Union is interpreted: in this sense that its great political virtue was contained. There was put before the eye of mankind, not a consolidated nationality; not a simple republic, with an anomalous and indefinable appendage of "States," which were not provinces, or cantons, or territories, and yet subordinate; but a spectacle such as it had never seen — an association of coequal and sovereign States, with a common authority, the subjects of which were yet sufficient enough to give it the effect of an American and national identity: "a republic of republics"; a government which derived its entire life from the good-will, the mutual interests, and the unconstrained devotion of the States which at once originated and composed it.
         It may be said that the admission of the sovereignty of the States breaks at once the bond of their association. Yet, this can be said only in a low and narrow sense. The wants and hopes of men operate with the same effect in political bodies as in the social community. Men will scarcely withdraw from a society in which they are alike happy and fortunate. Nor was it to be supposed that any of the American States would be so mad as to withdraw from a Union through which they were to be profited and to ascend, as long as it fulfilled its designs of affording them protection against foreign powers, commercial interchanges, justice and welcome among themselves, the charms and benefits of social intercourse; or that after these, its essential designs might have, within the exigencies of history or the possibilities of human depravity, ceased to be fulfilled, any State could be held in it without violating quite as well the spirit of republican institutions, and the obligations of public morals, as the written text of a compact.
         Such undoubtedly were the designs and the law of the American Union. It was a compact which covered only the interests which it specified; yet quite large enough to stand as an American nationality for all practical purposes. It had no dynastic element; it had no mission separate from the States; it had no independent authority over individuals, except within the scope of the powers delegated to it by the States. The States retained the power to control their own soil, their own domestic institutions, and their own morals. In respect to the powers which they prohibited to the General Government, they retained, of necessity, the right of exclusive judgment. That Government was not a mere league; it did have the power to reach individuals within the scope of powers delegated by the States; and as to these powers, its own courts — the Federal judiciary — were made the exclusive judge. In this sense — only in this sense — it had the qualities of a government; but a government founded exclusively on the good of the States, resting in their consent, and to which the law of force was as foreign in respect of its maintenance, as it had been in respect of its ordination.
         The Union was beautiful in theory. It might have been beautiful in practice. If it did prove in the history of America rather a rough companionship, scarcely ever a national identity in the common concerns intrusted to it, such was not the result of inherent defects, but of that party abuse and usurpation, in which have been wrecked so many of the political fabrics of mankind.