STATE DOCUMENTS
ON
Federal Relations:
THE STATES AND THE UNITED STATES.
EDITED WITH NOTES BY
HERMAN V. AMES, Ph.D.
PUBLISHED BY
THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY,
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA.
Sold by the Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., and by Longmans, Green & Co., New York.
PHILADELPHIA, 1906.
Copyright, 1906.
By HERMAN V. AMES.
CONTENTS.
PREFACE.
The following collection of documents on the relations of the States to the Federal Government, 1789–1861, comprises typical papers covering the official action of various states in different sections of the country, relative to the chief political and constitutional issues in our history. The documents have been selected especially with a view to illustrate the development of the doctrines of broad and strict construction, the prevalence of the "compact theory" of the Constitution and the doctrine of "State Rights," State opposition to the Federal Judiciary, and the different phases of the slavery controversy, culminating in the secession movement. The truth of the statement of Alexander Johnston, that "Almost every State in the Union in turn declared its own sovereignity and denounced as almost treasonable similar declarations in other cases by other States," is fully sustained by the following documents.
This compilation was prompted primarily to meet the need for illustrative material in connection with courses in the Constitutional History of the United States given in the University of Pennsylvania. In view of the fact that so few of the resolutions of the State Legislatures and other official documents of the various States were accessible to the general reader, it was believed that the publication of a series of selections from these important, but little used sources would be welcomed by others. This expectation has been fulfilled by the reception given to the successive numbers as they have appeared. With the completion of the series, in the hope of increasing their value and facilitating their use, the several numbers are now presented in one volume.
Philadelphia,
October 30th, 1906.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1927.
The author died in 1935, so this work is also in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 80 years or less. This work may also be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.