190 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



priety, on this national memorial day, consider some of the 

 issues involved and some of the questions settled by the great 

 war which asked and received such devotion and sacrifice not 

 only from the students of this institution but everywhere from 

 the patriotic young men of our country ? 



While there were important secondary influences that served 

 well the purposes of the agitators on both sides, the basal diffi- 

 culty was a question of construction of the fundamental law 

 about which there was an honest difference of opinion. 



Under the Constitution as interpreted by the founders of the 

 government and for a generation after them, there seems to have 

 been no question as to the right of a state to withdraw from the 

 Union. At that time the foremost men in the country seemed 

 to regard the system of government under the Constitution as 

 "an experiment entered upon by the states and from which each 

 and every state had the right peaceably to withdraw, a right 

 which was very likely to be exercised." In her act of ratification, 

 the delegates of Virginia in the name of that commonwealth 

 declared that the powers granted under the Constitution being 

 derived from the people may be resumed by them whenever the 

 same shall be perverted to their injury. Madison held that "as 

 the Constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction 

 of the states given by each in its sovereign capacity it followed 

 of necessity that in the last resort there could be no tribunal 

 above their authority to decide whether the contract made by 

 them be violated." Mr. William Rawle, the eminent Pennsyl- 

 vania jurist, in his commentaries said, "The states may wholly 

 withdraw from the Union, but while they continue, they must 

 retain the character of representative republics. The secession 

 of a state from the Union depends on the will of the people of 

 such state." 



There can be no doubt that, in the beginning, the union 

 of the states was looked upon as a mere confederacy, an agree- 

 ment, a compact, a bargain, an experiment, and that member- 



