State Governments
group · 2 works · 14 mentions · 38 anchored passages
state governments · the states · State governments · slave States · the States · the state governments · state and federal governments · state government · state legislature · state legislatures
spoken of as
1 expressionThe State Governments2 mentions
Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated (English)
If the means to which the government of the union may resort for executing the powers confided to it, are unlimited, it may easily select such as will impair or destroy the powers confided to the state governments.
in the texts
Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated
The governments of the individual American states, described as holders of limited conventional powers rather than sovereignty.
and a third in the state governments also, comprised in a mode of amending the federal constitution.
It can only be correct upon the ground, that neither the state nor federal governments received any powers except as trustees, or specified;
The first, the most obvious and the most conclusive argument to prove, that our governments including those of the states, do not possess an absolute or sovereign power over the national property, arises from the admission, that they are the trustees of the people.
The Unconstitutionality of Slavery
The governments of the individual states, whose asserted power to establish or continue slavery is disputed.
” If the State governments could enslave citizens of the United States, the State constitutions, and not the constitution of the United States, would be the “supreme law of the land”—for no higher act of supremacy could be exercised by one government over another, than that of taking the citizens of the latter out of the protection of their government, and reducing them to slavery.
It is perfectly clear, in the first place, that the constitution of the United States did not, of itself, create or establish slavery as a new institution;
Suppose, for an illustration of this principle, that the constitution of the United States had, by implication, plainly taken it for granted that the State legislatures had power—derived from the State constitutions—to order arbitrarily that infant children, or that men without the charge of crime, should be maimed—deprived, for instance, of a hand, a foot, or an eye.