7394. REPUBLICANS, States rights and.—
On the eclipse of federalism, although
not its extinction, its leaders got up the
Missouri question, under the false front of
lessening the measure of slavery, but with the
real view of producing a geographical division
of parties, which might ensure them the
next President. The people of the north
went blindfolded into the snare, followed
their leaders for awhile with a zeal truly
moral and laudable, until they became sensible
that they were injuring instead of aiding
the real interests of the slaves, that they had
been used merely as tools for electioneering
purposes; and that trick of hypocrisy then fell
as quickly as it had been got up. To that
is now succeeded a distinction, which, like
that of republican and federal, or whig and
tory, being equally intermixed through every
State, threatens none of those geographical
schisms which go immediately to a separation.
The line of division now is the preservation
of State rights as reserved in the Constitution,
or by strained constructions of that
instrument, to merge all into a consolidated
government. The tories are for strengthening
the Executive and General Government;
the whigs cherish the representative branch,
and the rights reserved by the States, as the
bulwark against consolidation, which must
immediately generate monarchy. And although
this division excites, as yet, no warmth,
yet it exists, is well understood, and will be a
principle of voting at the ensuing election,
with the reflecting men of both parties.—
To Marquis Lafayette. Washington ed. vii, 326.
Ford ed., x, 281.
(M.
Nov. 1823)
See Centralization, Judiciary, Missouri Question and Supreme Court.
