This Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

Certainly the Government of the United States is a limited government, and so is every State government a limited government.  With us this idea of limitation spreads through every form of administration—­general, State, and municipal—­and rests on the great distinguishing principle of the recognition of the rights of man.  The ancient republics absorbed the individual in the state—­prescribed his religion and controlled his activity.  The American system rests on the assertion of the equal right of every man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to freedom of conscience, to the culture and exercise of all his faculties.  As a consequence the State government is limited—­as to the General Government in the interest of union, as to the individual citizen in the interest of freedom.

States, with proper limitations of power, are essential to the existence of the Constitution of the United States.  At the very commencement, when we assumed a place among the powers of the earth, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by States; so also were the Articles of Confederation; and when “the people of the United States” ordained and established the Constitution it was the assent of the States, one by one, which gave it vitality.  In the event, too, of any amendment to the Constitution, the proposition of Congress needs the confirmation of States.  Without States one great branch of the legislative government would be wanting.  And if we look beyond the letter of the Constitution to the character of our country, its capacity for comprehending within its jurisdiction a vast continental empire is due to the system of States.  The best security for the perpetual existence of the States is the “supreme authority” of the Constitution of the United States.  The perpetuity of the Constitution brings with it the perpetuity of the States; their mutual relation makes us what we are, and in our political system their connection is indissoluble.  The whole can not exist without the parts, nor the parts without the whole.  So long as the Constitution of the United States endures, the States will endure.  The destruction of the one is the destruction of the other; the preservation of the one is the preservation of the other.

I have thus explained my views of the mutual relations of the Constitution and the States, because they unfold the principles on which I have sought to solve the momentous questions and overcome the appalling difficulties that met me at the very commencement of my Administration.  It has been my steadfast object to escape from the sway of momentary passions and to derive a healing policy from the fundamental and unchanging principles of the Constitution.