Citizen or subject?

The average American of this generation does not understand what it means to be a citizen of America. He does not know the relation of such a citizen to all governments _in_ Ame...

We have now lived with the American of an earlier generation through the days in which he ceased to be a subject of any government, and in which he established forever in Americ...

Living over the great days of our forefathers, we now approach the greatest of all. It comes four years after the end of the Revolution. Not satisfied with a mere union of their...

Living through those old days, immediately after the peace with England of 1783, we find that public and official recognition of a fatal defect in the _federal_ form of union ca...

We average Americans have now lived with those earlier Americans through the years in which they were educated to their making of the American nation, to their constitution of i...

The proposal which came from Philadelphia in 1787 was absolutely without precedent in history. Simply stated it was that, outside of all written law save the Statute of ’76, the...

It is no longer open to question that by the Constitution a nation was brought into being, and that that instrument was not merely operative to establish a closer union or leagu...

We recall how clearly the Americans at Philadelphia, in 1787, knew that any grant of _national_ power to interfere with the freedom of individuals _was_ the constitution of gove...

“RESOLVED, That the preceding Constitution be laid before the United States in Congress assembled; and that it is the opinion of this Convention, that it should afterwards be su...

It has been the misfortune of our prominent Americans of this generation that they read the Fifth Article with _preconceived_ notions of its meaning. To the error of that method...

Living through the days of that Convention, we have now seen three months and ten days of its sincere and able effort to word a Constitution which would “_secure_ the Blessings...

The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted it means now. _Being a grant of powers to a government its languag...

As we sit in those conventions and dwell upon the wisdom of the _practical_ thought which inspired those words, “in three fourths thereof” after the word “conventions,” we know...

“When a single government is instituted, the individuals of which it is composed surrender to it a part of their natural independence, which they before enjoyed as men. When a c...

“For my own part, I acknowledge a thorough conviction that Amendments which may, upon mature consideration, be thought useful, will be applicable to the organization of the gove...

We have now educated ourselves accurately to know, at the beginning of 1917, what was our own relation to all governments and what was the relation of those governments to one a...

In the closing month of 1917, the American people had been for eight months participants in the World War. In that winter, under the direction of their only government, exercisi...

“Let facts be submitted to a candid world.” _They_ have “combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving”...

When our present Constitution was before the people of America, waiting their approval or rejection, Madison and Hamilton published their series of essays, now known as _The Fed...

“The establishment of a Constitution, in time of profound peace, by the voluntary consent of a whole people, is a prodigy.” (_Fed._ No. 85). Those were the words of Hamilton, in...

“The important distinction so well understood in America, between a _Constitution_ established by the people and _unalterable by the government_, and a _law_ established by the...

There is one man whose skill as an artist could do justice to the atmosphere in which all the briefs of that March must have been written. Unfortunately, the reports of the deat...

We average Americans, therefore, come to the courtroom of 1920 with some knowledge that is a mathematical certainty. We know that everything done at Philadelphia by the “convent...

As we are not concerned with the meaning of the second section of the Amendment or with the validity of the Volstead Act (passed by Congress under the grant of said section) exc...

“Is the government of Virginia a state government after this government is adopted? I grant that it is a republican government, but for what purposes? For such trivial _domestic...

It is our invincible knowledge that the Fifth Article is not a power of attorney to any one to act for us, the citizens of America, in regard to any individual right which the _...

The United States [the great political society of men which this book persistently calls America] form, for many, and for most important purposes, a single nation.... In war, we...