Franklin Pierce: “To promote this object, legislative enactments and other means were adopted to take away or defeat rights which the…”

Our Government exists under a written compact between sovereign States, uniting for specific objects and with specific grants to their general agent.

The wise theory of this Government, so early adopted and steadily pursued, of avoiding all entangling alliances has hitherto exempted it from many complications in which it would otherwise have become involved.

But no clause of the Constitution is found on which to rest the claim of the United States to exercise jurisdiction over the soil of a State except that conferred by the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution.

The object of that war was to disenthrall the united colonies from foreign rule, which had proved to be oppressive, and to separate them permanently from the mother country.