[15] project of one misguided individual and a dozen and a half deluded followers, had been the organized movement of the States of Ohio and Pennsylvania, do the Seceders hold that the United States would have had no right to protect Virginia, or punish the individuals concerned in her invasion? Do the seceding States really mean, after all, to deny, that if a State law is passed to prevent the rendition of a fugitive slave, the General Government has any right to employ force to effect his surrender? But, as I have said, even the old Confederation, with all its weakness, was held by the ablest contemporary statesmen, and that of the State rights school, to possess the power of enforcing its requisitions against a delinquent State. Mr. Jefferson, in a letter to Mr. Adams of the 11th of July, 1786, on the subject of providing a naval force of 150 guns to chastise the Barbary Powers, urges, as an additional reason for such a step, that it would arm “the Federal head with the safest of all the instruments of coercion, over its delinquent members, and prevent it from using what would be less safe,” viz.: a land force. Writing on the same subject to Mr. Monroe a month later, (11 Aug. 1786,) he answers the objection of expense thus: “It will be said, ‘There is no money in the Treasury.’ There never will be money in the Treasury till the Confederacy shows its teeth. The States must see the rod, perhaps it must be felt by some of them. Every rational citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties nor occasion blood-shed; a land force would do both.” In the following year, and when the Confederation was at its last gasp, Mr. Jefferson was still of the opinion that it possessed the power of coercing the States, and that it was expedient to exercise it. In a letter to Col. Carrington of the 4th of April, 1787, he says: “It has been so often said as to be generally believed, that Congress have no power by the Confederation to enforce any thing, for instance, contributions of money. It was not necessary to give them that power expressly, they have it by the law of nature. When two parties make a compact, there results to each the power of compelling the other to execute it. Compulsion was never so easy as in our case, when a single frigate would soon levy on the commerce of a single State the deficiency of its contributions.” Such was Mr. Jefferson's opinion of the powers of Congress, under the “old contract of alliance.” Will any reasonable man maintain that under a constitution of government there can be less power to enforce the laws?
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[15] project of one misguided individual and a dozen and a half deluded followers, had been the organized movement of the States of Ohio and Pennsylvania, do the Seceders hold that the United States would have had no right to protect Virginia, or punish the individuals concerned in her invasion? Do the seceding States really mean, after all, to deny, that if a State law is passed to prevent the rendition of a fugitive slave, the General Government has any right to employ force to effect his surrender? But, as I have said, even the old Confederation, with all its weakness, was held by the ablest contemporary statesmen, and that of the State rights school, to possess the power of enforcing its requisitions against a delinquent State. Mr. Jefferson, in a letter to Mr. Adams of the 11th of July, 1786, on the subject of providing a naval force of 150 guns to chastise the Barbary Powers, urges, as an additional reason for such a step, that it would arm “the Federal head with the safest of all the instruments of coercion, over its delinquent members, and prevent it from using what would be less safe,” viz.: a land force. Writing on the same subject to Mr. Monroe a month later, (11 Aug. 1786,) he answers the objection of expense thus: “It will be said, ‘There is no money in the Treasury.’ There never will be money in the Treasury till the Confederacy shows its teeth. The States must see the rod, perhaps it must be felt by some of them. Every rational citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties nor occasion blood-shed; a land force would do both.” In the following year, and when the Confederation was at its last gasp, Mr. Jefferson was still of the opinion that it possessed the power of coercing the States, and that it was expedient to exercise it. In a letter to Col. Carrington of the 4th of April, 1787, he says: “It has been so often said as to be generally believed, that Congress have no power by the Confederation to enforce any thing, for instance, contributions of money. It was not necessary to give them that power expressly, they have it by the law of nature. When two parties make a compact, there results to each the power of compelling the other to execute it. Compulsion was never so easy as in our case, when a single frigate would soon levy on the commerce of a single State the deficiency of its contributions.” Such was Mr. Jefferson's opinion of the powers of Congress, under the “old contract of alliance.” Will any reasonable man maintain that under a constitution of government there can be less power to enforce the laws?
Van Nostrand. New York, New York. 1862.
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