“Hence we see how necessary for the Union is a coercive principle.  No man pretends the contrary.  We all see and feel this necessity.  The only question is, Shall it be a coercion of law, or a coercion of arms?  There is no other possible alternative.  Where will those who oppose a coercion of law come out?  Where will they end?  A necessary consequence of their principles is a war of the States one against another.  I am for coercion by law; that coercion which acts only upon delinquent individuals.  This Constitution does not attempt to coerce sovereign bodies, States, in their political capacity.  No coercion is applicable to such bodies, but that of an armed force.  If we should attempt to execute the laws of the Union by sending an armed force against a delinquent State, it would involve the good and bad, the innocent and guilty, in the same calamity.  But this legal coercion singles out the guilty individual, and punishes him for breaking the laws of the Union.”

Indeed, Sir, if we look to all contemporary history, to the numbers of the Federalist, to the debates in the conventions, to the publications of friends and foes, they all agree, that a change had been made from a confederacy of States to a different system; they all agree, that the Convention had formed a Constitution for a national government.  With this result some were satisfied, and some were dissatisfied; but all admitted that the thing had been done.  In none of these various productions and publications did any one intimate that the new Constitution was but another compact between States in their sovereign capacities.  I do not find such an opinion advanced in a single instance.  Everywhere, the people were told that the old Confederation was to be abandoned, and a new system to be tried; that a proper government was proposed, to be founded in the name of the people, and to have a regular organization of its own.  Everywhere, the people were told that it was to be a government with direct powers to make laws over individuals, and to lay taxes and imposts without the consent of the States.  Everywhere, it was understood to be a popular Constitution.  It came to the people for their adoption, and was to rest on the same deep foundation as the State constitutions themselves.  Its most distinguished advocates, who had been themselves members of the Convention, declared that the very object of submitting the Constitution to the people was, to preclude the possibility of its being regarded as a mere compact.  “However gross a heresy,” say the writers of the Federalist, “it may be to maintain that a party to a compact has a right to revoke that compact, the doctrine itself has had respectable advocates.  The possibility of a question of this nature proves the necessity of laying the foundations of our national government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority.  The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE.”