STATES -GENERAL 



5536 



STATUARY HALL 



other small wares." In the Revolutionary War 

 Staten Island was the scene of much fighting. 

 See map, page 4205. 



STATES -GENERAL, a legislative assembly 

 in France which existed from 1302 until 1789. 

 The term is also applied to the present Dutch 

 Parliament. The States-General of France was 

 composed of representatives of the clergy, the 

 nobility and the common people, who consti- 

 tuted what was known as the Third Estate. 

 Until the States-General of 1484, the repre- 

 sentatives of the clergy and the nobility were 

 summoned personally by the king, while the 

 representatives of the Third Estate were elected 

 by the people they represented. After 1484, 

 however, the representatives of all three classes 

 were elected by vote. 



The States-General did not meet at regular 

 intervals, but was called together by the king- 

 in times of emergency, whenever he needed 

 advice or money or moral support. Direct 

 power belonged exclusively to the king, but 

 the influence and indirect power of the States- 

 General were at times very great. By the year 

 1614, however, the power of this assembly had 

 declined to almost nothing. When it was again 

 summoned in 1789, the representatives of the 

 Third Estate, who had been growing very pow- 

 erful, made the famous decision which led to 

 the French Revolution (which see), that the 

 members of the States-General should consti- 

 tute a national assembly with full sovereign 

 powers, to be known as the National Constitu- 

 ent Assembly. 



The States-General of the Netherlands, an 

 assembly in which each province had one rep- 

 resentative and one vote, was in existence in 

 The Hague from 1593 until 1796, when it, too, 

 became a National Assembly. The present 

 Dutch Parliament, however, bears the name 

 States-General. 



STATES' RIGHTS, in American political 

 history, a term used to characterize the view 

 of those who held that the several states, in 

 uniting to form a central government, surren- 

 dered none of their sovereign powers. The 

 issue between the followers of Hamilton, who 

 urged a strong central government, and the 

 followers of Jefferson, who wished to maintain 

 a loose federation of sovereign states, was de- 

 bated at the very foundation of the United 

 States ; it was to remain an issue of importance 

 until the War of Secession. Out of the doc- 

 trine of states' rights grew the doctrine of the 

 rights of secession; this was the extreme and 

 logical assertion of the sovereignty of the South- 



era states. Their failure to uphold their claims 

 resulted in the removal of states' rights as a 

 political issue of importance. In a less dras- 

 tic form, the cleavage between the followers 

 of Jefferson and the adherents of Hamilton 

 may still be discerned in much political writ- 

 ing and speaking. 



STATICS, stat'iks, a branch of dynamics. 

 Dynamics treats of the properties of matter 

 in motion and is divided into two branches 

 statics and kinetics. Statics deals with condi- 

 tions under which there is no change of mo- 

 tion of material bodies when they are acted 

 upon by various forces. When two or more 

 forces so act upon a body as to produce no 

 change of motion they are said to be in equi- 

 librium. 



Related Subjects. The following articles in 

 these volumes should be read in this connection : 

 Composition of Forces Mechanics 

 Dynamics Physics 



STATUARY, stat'uari, HALL, a large, cir- 

 cular room in the Capitol at Washington, on 

 the main floor, directly beneath the great cen- 

 tral dome of the building. Until 1857 it was 

 the chamber of the House of Representatives. 

 By act of Congress in 1864 it was created a 

 memorial hall, to which each state may con- 

 tribute two statues to honor the men or women 

 whom it considers worthy of commemoration. 

 The act reads as follows: 



The President is hereby authorized to invite 

 each and all the States to provide and furnish 

 statues, in marble or bronze, not exceeding two 

 jn number for each State, of deceased persons 

 who have been citizens thereof, and illustrious 

 for their historic renown or from distinguished 

 civic or military services, such as each State shall 

 deem worthy of this national commemoration ; 

 and when so furnished the same shall be placed 

 in the old hall of the House of Representatives, 

 in the Capitol of the United States, which is 

 hereby set apart, .or so much thereof as may be 

 necessary, as a national statuary hall, for the 

 purposes herein indicated. 



This hall, which now echoes to the footsteps 

 of the sight-seer, once rang with the eloquence 

 of great men. If its walls could speak, they 

 might tell of many historic events which they 

 had seen. Here Madison was inaugurated as 

 President in 1809 and in 1813, and Monroe in 

 1821. 



Here the House of Representatives elected 

 John Quincy Adams as President in the mo- 

 mentous election o{ 1825, and twenty-five years 

 later Fillmore took the oath of office on the 

 day after Zachary Taylor died. In this hall 

 Henry Clay, as Speaker, presided for many 



