Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

[483] other great ends for which the Government was established, had been the aim and united effort of all—what effects would not have been produced? As our Government increases in expansion it would increase in its beneficent effect upon the people; we should, as we grow in power and prosperity, also grow in fraternity, and it would be no longer a wonder to see a man coming from a Southern State to address a Democratic audience in Boston.

But I have referred to the fact that Massachusetts stood preeminently forward among those who asserted community independence: and this reminds me of another incident. President Washington visited Boston when John Hancock was Governor, and Hancock refused to call upon the President, because he contended that any man who came within the limits of Massachusetts must yield rank and precedence to the Governor of the State. He eventually only surrendered the point on account of his personal regard and respect for the character of George Washington. I honor him for this, and value it as one of the early testimonies in favor of State rights. I wish all our Governors had the same regard for the dignity of the State as had the great and glorious John Hancock.

In the beginning the founders of this Government were true democratic State-rights men. Democracy was State rights, and State rights was democracy, and it is to-day. Your resolutions breathe it. The Declaration of Independence embodied the sentiments which had lived in the hearts of the country for many years before its formal assertion. Our fathers asserted the great principle—the right of the people to choose their own government—and that government rested upon the consent of the governed. In every form of expression it uttered the same idea, community independence and the dependence of the Union upon the communities of which it consisted. It was an American declaration of the unalienable right of man; it was a general truth, and I wish it were accepted by all men. But I have said that this State sovereignty—this community independence—has never been surrendered, and that there is no power in the Federal Government to coerce a State. Will any one ask me, then, how a State is to be held to the fulfillment of its obligations? My answer is, by its honor. The obligation is the more sacred to observe every feature of the compact, because there is no power to enforce it. The great error of the Confederation was, that it attempted to act upon the States. It was found impracticable, and our present form of government was adopted, which acts upon individuals, and is not designed to act upon States. The question of State coercion was raised in the Convention which framed the Constitution, and, after discussion, the proposition to give power to the General Government to enforce against any State obedience to the laws was rejected. It is upon the ground that a State can not be coerced that observance of the compact is a sacred obligation. It was upon this principle that our fathers depended for the perpetuity of a fraternal Union, and for the security of the rights that the Constitution was designed to preserve. The fugitive slave compact in the Constitution of the United States implied that the States should fulfill it voluntarily. They expected the States to legislate so as to secure the rendition of fugitives; and in 1778 it was a matter of complaint that the Spanish colony of Florida did not restore fugitive negroes from the United States who escaped into that colony, and a committee, composed of Hamilton, of New York, Sedgwick, of Massachusetts, and Mason, of Virginia, reported resolutions in the Congress, instructing the Secretary of Foreign Affairs to address the charge d'affaires at Madrid to apply