VI. -- SECESSION.
From the beginning of our history it has been a mooted question whether
we are to consider the United States as a political state or as a
congeries of political states, as a _Bundesstaat_ or as a _Staatenbund_.
The essence of the controversy seems to be contained in the very title
of the republic, one school laying stress on the word United, as the
other does on the word States. The phases of the controversy have been
beyond calculation, and one of its consequences has been a civil war of
tremendous energy and cost in blood and treasure.
Looking at the facts alone of our history, one would be most apt to
conclude that the United States had been a political state from the
beginning, its form being entirely revolutionary until the final
ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781, then under the
very loose and inefficient government of the Articles until 1789,
and thereafter under the very efficient national government of the
Constitution; that, in the final transformation of 1787-9, there were
features which were also decidedly revolutionary; but that there was
no time when any of the colonies had the prospect or the power of
establishing a separate national existence of its own. The facts are
not consistent with the theory that the States ever were independent
political states, in any scientific sense.
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