"Constitution of the United States" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Constitution of the United States. You could change Mt. Hood, but it would take a pile of shovels. (Laughter). You could change Mt. Hood a good deal easier. It could be done. The law provides that if you pass a law through congress and the senate and it is signed by the president, to change the Constitution, you may submit it ...
— Industrial Conspiracies • Clarence S. Darrow
... experimental building. "Art" is a great word, and we use it too narrowly when we apply it to an ode of Shelley or a mutilated statue of Praxiteles, but are silent before a Colonial church or a free commonwealth or the Constitution of the United States. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... been accomplished; and it is believed they will shortly apply for the admission of California into the Union as a sovereign State. Should such be the case, and should their constitution be conformable to the requisitions of the Constitution of the United States, I recommend their application to the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... affection to such an extent that every member of the Assembly but the Ministers was in opposition. Wherever the Emperor went, he was treated with coldness instead of enthusiasm. A scheme on the part of the Republicans for adopting the Constitution of the United States, but retaining Pedro as hereditary President, caused him to dismiss his Ministers, and surround himself with men of the Absolutist party. At this an immense crowd assembled in the Campo de Santa Ana, demanding the reinstatement ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... Colonial armies from the beginning of the war to the proclamation of peace, as president of the convention which framed the Constitution of the United States, and as the first President of the United States under that Constitution, Washington has a distinction differing from that of all other illustrious Americans. No other name bears or can bear such a relation to the Government. Not only by his military genius—his ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... purpose to allow the rebellious States to disfranchise, if they should see fit, their colored citizens. This unfortunate blunder must now be retrieved, and the emasculated citizenship given to the negro supplanted by that contemplated in the Constitution of the United States, which declares that the citizens of each State shall enjoy all the rights and immunities of citizens of the several States,—so that a legal voter in any State shall be a legal ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... this side of the Atlantic, was, in popular oratory, the great champion of the colonies against George III., and afterward of the political autonomy of the State of Virginia against the all-dominating centralization which he saw coiled up in the projected Constitution of the United States.[2] ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... government which should take charge of all public affairs not belonging to any one State by itself. This was done, and a plan was formed in the year 1787, and adopted by the people of all the States. This was called the Constitution of the United States. It set up a government of three parts. First, there was Congress, made up of men chosen, in one way or another, by the people. Congress was to make the laws. Second, there was the President, chosen by ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... one of whom, McKean, served continuously in Congress from its opening in 1774 till its close in 1783, during a part of which time he was its president, and also serving as chief justice of Pennsylvania. The chairman of the committee that drafted the constitution of the United States, Rutledge, was, by ancestry, Scotch-Irish. When the same instrument was submitted, the three states first to adopt it were the middle states, or Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, so largely settled by the ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... alchemy, transform him into a good American citizen; as if you could take him water, and in it make a mixture—one part the ability to read and write and speak the English language; then another part, the Declaration of Independence; one part, the Constitution of the United States; one part, a love for apple pie; one part, a desire and a willingness to wear American shoes; and another part, a pride in using American plumbing; and take all those together and grind them up, and have ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... briefly in March 1867 when Congress provided that the Confederate states would be readmitted to the Union and their delegations would be seated in Congress when they adopted constitutions which conformed to the Constitution of the United States with the new Fourteenth Amendment. A convention, dominated largely by Republican reconstructionists, met in December 1867 and brought forth the so-called "Underwood Constitution," named for Judge John Underwood who presided ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... services in the Indian wars, in the American Revolution, and in Shays' Rebellion. His grandfather was one of the seven delegates from the county of Worcester, in the Massachusetts convention of 1788, for ratifying the Constitution of the United States, who voted in favor of it. Isaac Goodwin, Esq., in The Worcester Magazine, vol. ii, page 45, bears this testimony: "Of all the ancient Lancaster families, there is no one that has sustained so many important offices as ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... individual citizens. The former is the plan of the German so-called Confederation, and of the Swiss Constitution previous to 1847. It was tried in America for a few years immediately following the War of Independence. The other principle is that of the existing Constitution of the United States, and has been adopted within the last dozen years by the Swiss Confederacy. The Federal Congress of the American Union is a substantive part of the government of every individual state. Within the limits of its attributions, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... credit for the submission and Democratic leaders felt it to be very necessary that the Alabama Legislature should ratify. On July 12 President Wilson telegraphed to Governor Kilby as follows: "I hope you will pardon me if I express my very earnest hope that the suffrage amendment to the constitution of the United States may be ratified by the great State of Alabama. It would constitute a very happy augury for the future and add greatly to the strength of a movement which, in my judgment, is based upon the highest consideration both of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... objectionable clause should never be construed to authorize the passage of any laws by which any citizen of either of the states of the Union should be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which such citizen was entitled under the Constitution of the United States. This Missouri accepted, but the legislature somewhat contemptuously added that it was without power to bind the state. [Footnote: Niles' Register, XX., ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... democracy has never been maintained save by the delegation of great powers to its chosen leaders. It was the remark of one of the foremost American Democrats of the nineteenth century, a man who received the highest honors which his party could bestow, that the Constitution of the United States was made, not to promote Democracy, but to check it. This statement is true, and it is as true of the Venetian ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... of my country abroad during the whole course of these transactions, I first saw the Constitution of the United States in a foreign country. Irritated by no literary altercation, animated by no public debate, heated by no party animosity, I read it with great satisfaction, as the result of good heads, prompted by good hearts; as ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... reason nothing can seem more absurd than that one man, of very moderate capacities, luxuriating in his palace at Vienna, should pretend to hold dominion over so many millions so widely dispersed. But the progress of the world towards intelligent liberty has been very slow. When we contrast the constitution of the United States with such a political condition, all our evils and difficulties dwindle to ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... of the United States; and in allegiance to it I have sworn to defend the Constitution of my country, if need be, with my life. Christ requires of me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me. The Constitution of the United States requires of me to do unto two millions of slaves [at that time there were slaves; now one might venture to substitute the word 'laborers'] the very opposite of what I would they should do unto me—that is to help to keep them ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... "rank idealist." Morse, Watt, Marconi, Edison—all were, at first, adjudged idealists. We say of the League of Nations that it is ideal, and we use the term in a derogatory sense. But that was exactly what was said of the Constitution of the United States. "Insanely ideal" was the term used ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... this paper, who, on account of his devotion to the good cause, was called by Samuel Adams "The Duke of Princeton." Their strong adherence to the "state rights" principle led the people of the town to vote against the adoption of the Constitution of the United States; but when it was adopted they abided by it, and when the Union was menaced in the recent Rebellion they nobly responded to the call of the nation with one hundred and twenty-seven men and nearly twenty thousand ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... us from the effects of the conspiracy above mentioned far exceeded any amount of fine which might have been reasonably imposed under the indictments upon which we had been found guilty. Was not the enormous sum which Judge Crawford sentenced us to pay a gross violation of the provision in the constitution of the United States against excessive fines? Any fine utterly beyond a man's ability to pay, and which operates to keep him a prisoner for life, must be excessive, or else that word has ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... and setting forth a liturgy for a body of Christians destined to be known as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. During the interval between the issue of the Declaration of Independence and the Ratification of the Constitution of the United States, the people in this country who had been brought up in the communion of the Church of England found themselves ecclesiastically in a very delicate position indeed. As colonists they had been canonically under the spiritual ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... Constitution of the United States is not a league, confederacy, or compact between the people of the several States in their sovereign capacities; but a government proper, founded on the adoption of the people, and creating direct relations between ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... and adopted by representatives from the Colonies, and were forwarded to the King. In 1774 the first Continental Congress met and formed a union of the Colonies; in 1776 the Colonies declared their independence. This was confirmed, in 1783, by the Treaty of Paris; in 1787, the Constitution of the United States was drafted; and in 1789, the American government began. In the preamble to the twenty-seven charges of tyranny and oppression made against the King in the Declaration of Independence, we find a statement of political philosophy [31] which is a combination of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... suggests the goal towards which education, religion and consequent material prosperity are gradually uplifting the race. This goal is clearly expressed in the following amendments to the Constitution of the United States. ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... Jane," I said, solemnly. "The Constitution of the United States, and if it is good enough for a whole Country I darsay it is good enough for us. As for By-laws, we can make them as we need them, which is the way laws ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... says, by which these rewards may be limited are ready to hand, and can be applied with the utmost ease. They are provided by the democratic Constitution of the United States of America. "No one can doubt, for example," he goes on to observe, "that, if the majority of the voters of the State of New York chose to elect a governor of their own way of thinking, they could readily enact a progressive ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... followed in the railroad cases. The attorneys for the warehousemen had argued that the act in question, by assuming to limit charges, amounted to a deprivation of property without due process of law and was thus repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. But the court declared that it had long been customary both in England and America to regulate by law any business in which the public has an interest, such as ferries, common carriers, bakers, or millers, and that the warehouse business in question was undoubtedly ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... Representative, and with the sincerest hope that all may return safely to their homes, and wishing each a successful and happy future during life, I now exercise my last official duty as presiding officer of this House by declaring the term of this House under the Constitution of the United States at an end, and that it shall stand adjourned sine die. (Hearty and continued applause.)"— Con. Record, Vol. xiv., Part IV., ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... your hands! You severally and solemnly swear that this is all right, true, and legal, according to the provisions of the Constitution of the United States, and the laws and regulations of the State of——. So help you God, gentlemen, and me, Abijah Witherpee, Justice of the Peace, fee two shillings.' There is reason to believe that both parties experienced a sense of relief when the crisis was over, and the requirements ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cunning and brute force. Burke said, "this sacred trust of government does not arise from our conventions and compacts," but it gives our conventions and compacts all the force and sanction which they have. I shall be told that the name of God is not found in the Constitution of the United States; it did not need to be when it was ...
— Five Sermons • H.B. Whipple
... philanthropic inhabitants of our section of the country, that "principles are eternal." We judge the existing case by these eternal principles. We may fail, and fail ignominiously; but, in our failure, nobody can say that we violated any sacred form of the ever-glorious Constitution of the United States. The Constitution has in it no provisions to secure its own existence by unconstitutional means. It is therefore our duty, as lawyers as well as legislators, to allow the gentlemen who have repudiated it, because they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... hardly suffer with posterity from his unwillingness to be the first president to sign a death warrant for treason, especially as there was room for grave doubts whether the doings of this person amounted to treason as defined by the constitution of the United States. ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... Abbott states, "there was no true Capital—indeed, no true Nation. There were a variety of separate provinces, having almost as little common life as had the American colonies before the formation of the Constitution of the United States. In war these colonies united; in peace they separated from ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States. By George Ticknor Curtis. 2 vols., 8vo, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Encyclopaedists is scarcely apposite to-day. It does not appeal to the working-man who has had his head broken by a policeman's club, his union treasury bankrupted by a court decision, or his job taken away from him by a labour-saving invention. Nor does the Constitution of the United States appear so glorious and constitutional to the working-man who has experienced a bull-pen or been unconstitutionally deported from Colorado. Nor are this particular working-man's hurt feelings soothed by reading in the newspapers that both the bull-pen and the deportation were pre-eminently just, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... first draft of the Constitution; then they handed their work over to a Committee for Style and Arrangement, composed of W.S. Johnson of North Carolina, Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, Madison, and King. Then, on September 17th, the Constitution of the United States was formally published. This document, done "by the Unanimous Consent of the States present," was sent to the Governor or Legislature of each State with the understanding that its ratification by nine States would ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... self-reliant men, often self-educated (at least in many important particulars), adventurous and daring by nature, dependent upon themselves and the use of their faculties for happiness, who made England great among nations, and wrote the Constitution of the United States. ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... Anselm, however, was a man of the idealistic type of mind, who believed that if he accepted as the conditions of his work the evils with which he was surrounded, and consented to use the tools that he found ready to his hand, he had made, as another reformer of somewhat the same type once said of the constitution of the United States in the matter of slavery, "a covenant with death ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... free, and break every yoke." He said Paul sent back the fugitive slave Onesimus to his master Philemon; I rejoined, "Paul said, 'I send him back, not as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved; receive him as myself.'" He quoted the Constitution of the United States, the article commanding that fugitive slaves should be delivered back to their masters; in reply I quoted from Deuteronomy the "Higher Law," "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... was the quiet answer. "The Constitution of the United States is also a perpetual charter, which it was treason to violate. When you and your leaders have no hesitation at breaking national faith, it is absurd to claim rights under the laws of a State which you deny to ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... "irreproachable;" and that "so far as mere belief and membership in the Mormon Church are concerned, he is fully within his rights and privileges under the guaranty of religious freedom given by the Constitution of the United States." Having thus summarily excluded all the large and troublesome points of the investigation, these Senators decided that there remained "but two grounds on which the right or title of Reed Smoot to his seat in the Senate" was contested. The first was whether he had taken a certain ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... take the following Oath or Affirmation:—"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... but, a people who had so long been kept down, could not at once appreciate the value of the changes; consequently, they have been slow in elevating their heads to the proper standard of men. The legislature of New Mexico, as it has been recognized under the constitution of the United States, resembles other forms of territorial governments. This statement is true in theory, but not in practice; for it is impossible to collect an uneducated people, unused to self government, and allow them to steer their own bark as law-makers, without observing that they make many ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... of note that this experience with an executive-legislative- judicial combination of National Government was sufficient to last for all time. Amidst the many changes suggested for the Constitution of the United States since it has been in effect, none has ever been proposed which would hand over the powers of the president to a Congress. Even Jefferson, alarmed by the growth of the executive authority before 1800, never suggested a return to the method ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... most successful attempt of this kind is formulated in the Constitution of the United States itself and is being carried on in our country from day to day, yet successful as it is, our history is witness, and the daily press testifies, that the combination of general and local governments has its weak points and is dependent for its smooth working ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... 1774; The Articles of Confederation; The Declaration of Independence, and The Constitution of the United States. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... transmit to the Senators and Representatives in Congress, and the Executives of the several States this Resolution, as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, respecting Slaves." June 8, Governor's message; Connecticut answers that it is inexpedient; Maryland opposes the proposition. Massachusetts Resolves, February, 1805, p. 55; June, 1805, p. 18. ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... motives, it is still exceedingly questionable whether the lodge should take any notice of the act, because by so doing the independence of the ballot might be impaired. It is through a similar mode of reasoning that the Constitution of the United States provides, that the members of Congress shall not be questioned, in any other place, for any speech or debate in either House. As in this way the freedom of debate is preserved in legislative bodies, so in like manner should the freedom of the ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... against the resistance (if need be) of one or more of the separate States. These are not the accidents but the essential features of any Federal constitution; and are found under the constitution of the Canadian Dominion and of the Swiss Confederacy, no less than under the constitution of the United States. They all depend on the simple, but often neglected fact, that a Federal constitution implies an elaborate distribution and definition of political powers; that it is from its very nature a compromise ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... of Europe owe much more than they are often aware of to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the existence of that great Republic. The United States have been in point of fact an ark of refuge to the people of Europe, when fleeing from the storms and the revolutions of the old continent. They have been, as far as the artisans ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States, the Monroe Doctrine, and the famous speeches of Washington, Lincoln, Webster and Roosevelt. "The Making of an American," by ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Island of Cuba, in 1852, when asked to join England and France in a tripartite treaty, in which a clause was embodied forbidding the United States from ever acquiring or annexing that Island to this republic, "It may well be doubted, whether the Constitution of the United States would allow the treaty making power to impose a permanent disability on the American government for all coming time, and prevent it under any future change of circumstances from doing what has so often ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... the governor and other officials from the state to sixty days, but the legislature of 1911 by resolution, removed the limitations on the governor and other high state officials. In addition to that the constitution of the United States specifically provides the conditions under which a state official may be removed, and it does not include this particular condition. There is no reason why Gov. Johnson cannot remain outside the state as long as he sees fit and there is nothing the legislature can do to ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... cabin, sitting down with us to our humble meal of potatoes and whiskey (we lived with a simplicity which of course you could not possibly understand), and would spend the evening talking with my father over the interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. We children used to stand beside them listening open-mouthed beside the fire in our plain leather night-gowns. I shall never forget how I was thrilled when I first heard Lincoln lay down his famous theory of the territorial ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... by disgruntled soldiers. It was found difficult for Members of Congress to find adequate quarters, and it was always a problem to move records and files. Thus it developed that Congress wanted a home of its own. The Constitution of the United States provided for a Federal District ten miles square (Art. ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... Miss Anthony was seated in her brother's office reading the papers when she learned to her amazement that several resolutions had been offered in the House of Representatives sanctioning disfranchisement on account of sex. Up to this time the Constitution of the United States never had been desecrated by the word "male," and she saw instantly that such action would create a more formidable barrier than any now existing against the enfranchisement of women. She hesitated no longer but started immediately on her homeward journey, stopping ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... marriage licenses in the City Hall. There must have been something more than accident in its discovery just in this spot. Men of thoughtful temper will do well to heed the symbolism of this incident. Plainly not only the constitution of the United States is to be made a quaffing-stock, but the very sanctity of the marriage bond is assailed. To this form of terrorism ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... of the revolutionary programme—the principle of economic equality and a nationalized industrial system as its means and pledge—the American people were peculiarly adapted to understand and appreciate. The lawyers had made a Constitution of the United States, but the true American constitution—the one written on the people's hearts—had always remained the immortal Declaration with its assertion of the inalienable equality of all men. As to the nationalization of industry, while it involved a set of consequences which would completely transform ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... buy the Legislatures, they own the Senators, and therefore the Constitution of the United States now ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... of Christ's first disciples. 2: Tell how some of them were killed. 3. How long was the world without the gospel? 4. Tell how Columbus discovered America. 5. Who were the Pilgrims? 6. What was the Revolutionary war about? 7. What is the Constitution of the United States? 8. Find out what it says about religious liberty. 9. Why is America ...
— A Young Folks' History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints • Nephi Anderson
... nearly five months before California was admitted into the Union, that Legislature gaily passed an act consisting of this provision: "The common law of England, so far as it is not repugnant to or inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, or the Constitution or laws of the State of California, shall be the rule of the decision in all the courts of ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... mass meeting for the unemployed were Socialists. It was at this meeting that a police official declared to a man who had the temerity to question him that the policeman's club was mightier than the Constitution of the United States. ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... He was, however, made a member of the Council of Censors, and in 1784 represented his county in the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. He was likewise, in 1787, a member of the Convention of the State called to ratify the Constitution of the United States. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... State, was the announcement to the world that the people of the United States had finally and decisively conquered the feudal aristocracy of the republic after a civil contest of eighty years. With no weapons but those placed in their hands by the Constitution of the United States, the freemen of the republic had practically put this great slave aristocracy under their feet forever. That portion of the Union which was controlled by the will of the whole people had become so decidedly superior in every attribute ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... tipping the hat, saluting an officer, monogamy, attending church, Sabbath observance, prohibition, immersion as a form of baptism, the afternoon tea of the Englishman, the double standard of morals, the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, the Constitution of the United States. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... these words is the memorable preamble to the Constitution of the United States, framed by the convention ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... Repairs in the Constitution of the United States have been usually in the direction of increased liberties for the people. The Tsar, on the contrary, aided by his Cabinet and high Government officials, drafted a new edition of the Fundamental Laws suited to ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... mobility of an unwritten constitution is the fixity of a constitution written out, like that of the United States or Switzerland, in one authoritative code. The constitution of the United States, drawn up at Philadelphia in 1787, is contained in a code of articles. It was ratified separately by each state, and thenceforward became the positive and exclusive statement of the constitution. The legislative powers ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... educated in the trades as well as in the professions; that they should own homes, pay their taxes and perform their civic duties like all other citizens and that they should possess all of the rights and privileges that are delegated to them by the Constitution of the United States. They believe in the purity of the state and in the sanctity of the home. They are enduring, self-sacrificing, patient, and long suffering, and desire the good of all. It is this class that always assists in quelling ...
— Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt • William James Edwards
... among the founders of the Republic, but foremost in the rank of those early American statesmen, to whom it fell to interpret and administer the organic laws which the founders declared and the people ratified in the Constitution of the United States. A study of his life shows that, from the time of the peace until his death, his influence, either by direct action or indirect counsel, may be traced through ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... offer this audience, gathered in the noble hall of this historic Inn—of "old Purpulei, Britain's ornament"—any apology for challenging its attention in this and two succeeding addresses to the genesis, formulation, and the fundamental political philosophy of the Constitution of the United States. The occasion gives me peculiar satisfaction, not only in the opportunity to thank my fellow Benchers of the Inn for their graciousness in granting the use of this noble Hall for this purpose, but also because ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... to say one word which will exasperate the already too much inflamed state of the public mind; but I will say that the Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance thereof, must be enforced; and they who stand across the path of that enforcement must either destroy the power of the United States, ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... separate body of legislation for each part of the province. He described the new scheme of government as a happy combination of the strength of a legislative union with the freedom of a federal union, and with protection to local interests. The constitution of the United States was "one of the most skilful works which human intelligence ever created; one of the most perfect organizations that ever governed a free people." Experience had shown that its main defect was the doctrine of State sovereignty. This blemish was avoided ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... Republican party, as to their intention to restore "the Union as it was," require an explanation. It is the doctrine of the Republican party, that Freedom is national and Slavery sectional; that the Constitution of the United States was designed for the promotion of liberty, and not of slavery; that its framers contemplated the gradual abolition of slavery; and that in the hands of an anti-slavery majority it could be so wielded as peaceably to extinguish this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... by the President's attitude. Legislative enactments and municipal ordinances and regulations tending to reduce the colored people to a state of semi-slavery multiplied at a lively rate. Measures taken for the protection of the emancipated slaves were indiscriminately denounced in the name of the Constitution of the United States as acts of insufferable tyranny. The instant admission to seats in the national Congress of senators and representatives from the "States lately in rebellion" was loudly demanded as a constitutional right, and for these seats men were presented who but yesterday had stood in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... importation of Negro slaves, only to be defeated by the cotton-growing interests of some states and the shipping interests of others who demanded that the trade be continued for a period of years. And so the Constitution of the United States when first put into effect in the Federal Union permitted for twenty years the importation of captive Negroes from Africa ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... ended when we arrived in Springfield. His humorous remark was that he had the constitution of the United States. He was never so wholly fatigued that a drink or a meal would not pull him up to a zest and a capacity for a further task. A little sleep restored him to a new exuberance. Truly, he was one of the most vital men who come into the world for a ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... generals in the field commanding, having decided that domestic slavery is abolished, that therefore, under the circumstances, we acquiesce in said proclamations, and do hereby ordain implicit obedience to the Constitution of the United States, and all laws made ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer
... might throw light upon the cause of our political troubles. As to my own position, I do not favour the Negro's giving up anything which is fundamental and which has been guaranteed to him by the Constitution of the United States. It is not best for him to relinquish any of his rights; nor would his doing so be best for the Southern white man. Every law placed in the Constitution of the United States was placed there to encourage ...
— The Future of the American Negro • Booker T. Washington
... the establishment of the Republic, when there was still some faint hope that there might yet be found intelligence and virtue in the people to sustain the Constitution, the Girondists met at Madame Roland's, and celebrated, with trembling exultation, the birth of popular liberty. The Constitution of the United States was the beau ideal of the Girondists, and, vainly dreaming that the institutions which Washington and his compatriots had established in Christian America were now firmly planted in infidel France, they endeavored ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... without difficulty the dictums that the law was the most important of all professions, that those who entered it were a priestly class set aside to guard from profanation that Ark of the Covenant, the Constitution of the United States. In short, I was taught law precisely as I had been taught religion,—scriptural infallibility over again,—a static law and a static theology,—a set of concepts that were supposed to be equal to any problems civilization would have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the House of Representatives of the 31st of December last, requesting information of the number of States which had ratified the thirteenth article of the amendments to the Constitution of the United States,[141] I transmit to the House a detailed report from the Secretary of State, which contains all the information that has been received upon ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... The Constitution of the United States was adopted nearly fifty years before the locomotive made its appearance. Had the steam railroad been in existence in 1787 and been as important an agency of commerce as it is to-day, there is every reason to believe ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... the majority vote. To be sure, we seem to find it necessary to limit the application of this doctrine, and to seek stability of government by fixing, in certain cases rather arbitrarily, the size of the majority that shall count. [Footnote: See the Constitution of the United States, Article V.] But the doctrine, taken generally, does seem in harmony with the test of rationality developed above. [Footnote: Chapter xvi.] It aims at the satisfaction of many desires—at what may be termed ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, was fired upon by the Southerners and a few days after was captured. The Confederates proclaimed themselves aliens, and thereby debarred themselves of all right to claim protection under the Constitution of the United States. We did not admit the fact that they were aliens, but all the same, they debarred themselves of the right to expect better treatment than people of any other foreign state who make war upon an independent nation. Upon the firing ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... King at St. Cloud hastened to confirm the appointment. The Duke of Orleans respectfully declined the royal appointment. "You cannot receive things from everybody," said Dupont. General Lafayette soon came to pay his respects. "You know," said he, "that I am a republican, and consider the Constitution of the United States as the most perfect that has been devised." "So do I," replied the Duke; "but do you think that in the present condition of France it would be advisable for us to adopt it?" "No," answered Lafayette; "what ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... with great satisfaction the opportunity which now presents itself of congratulating you on the present favorable prospects of our public affairs. The recent accession of the important state of North Carolina to the Constitution of the United States (of which official information has been received), the rising credit and respectability of our country, the general and increasing good will toward the government of the Union, and the concord, peace, and plenty with which we are blessed are circumstances auspicious in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Napoleon Crossing the Alps. Lithograph, The Grave at St. Helena. Steel-plates, Trumbull's Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Sally from Gibraltar. Copper- plates, Moses Smiting the Rock, and Return of the Prodigal Son. In big gilt frame, slander of the family in oil: papa holding a book ('Constitution of the United States'); guitar leaning against mamma, blue ribbons fluttering from its neck; the young ladies, as children, in slippers and scalloped pantelettes, one embracing toy horse, the other beguiling kitten with ball of yarn, and both simpering up at mamma, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... General Fitzhugh Lee at a dinner given by the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the Hibernian Society of Philadelphia, at the city of Philadelphia, September 17, 1887. The occasion of the dinner was the one hundredth anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. General Lee, then governor of Virginia, was the guest of Governor Beaver at the dinner. The Chairman, Hon. Andrew G. Curtin [Pennsylvania's war governor], in introducing General Lee said: "We have here to-day ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... But this is far from conclusive. No man gets rid of the obligation of a bond by telling a witness that he does not mean to be bound; the question is not what he means, but what the party with whom he deals must naturally take him to mean. Now the Constitution of the United States upon the face of it purports to create a government able to take its place among the other governments of the world, able if it declares war to wield the whole force of its country in that war, and able if it makes peace to impose that ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... the United Provinces at that period of domestic dissensions and incipient civil war and the general impressions manifested in the same nation two centuries and a half later, on the outbreak of the slavery rebellion, as to the constitution of the United States. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his Persian Letters, and more especially in The Spirit of the Laws (1748), he argued that government is a complicated matter and, to be successful, must be adapted to the peculiarities of a particular people. Theoretically he preferred a republic, and the Constitution of the United States consciously embodied many of his theories. Practically, he considered the government of Great Britain very admirable, and although it sheltered many abuses, as we shall presently see, [Footnote: See below, pp. 432 ff.] ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... christening of the daughter of an American woman who had married an Englishman. When the ceremony was finished he leaned over the font toward his fellow godfather. "Born on July 4th," he exclaimed, "of an American mother! And we two Yankee godfathers! We'll see that this child is taught the Constitution of the United States!" ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... manhood precisely in the years when the war and its sequels upset the whole system of public education in the South. At any rate (it is argued), the illiterate white is a totally different man from the illiterate negro. How far such modifications of the State constitutions are consistent with the Constitution of the United States, is a nice question upon which I shall not attempt to enter. The arguments used to reconcile this test of intelligence with Amendments XIV. and XV. of the United States Constitution seem to me more ingenious than convincing. But, constitutional or not, the compromise is reasonable; and though ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially in this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it in my view that I might take the oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration ...
— Abraham Lincoln - A Memorial Discourse • Rev. T. M. Eddy
... writer, b. in the West Indies, was one of the framers of the Constitution of the United States, and was the first Sec. of the national Treasury. He was one of the greatest of American statesmen, and has also a place in literature as the principal writer in the Federalist, a periodical founded to expound and defend the new Constitution, which was afterwards ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... militia for its protection would greatly exceed the ability of the State government. The capital of the State [which was three miles from the bay, on a navigable river] has not sufficient force for its protection. By the Constitution of the United States, the common defence is committed to the National Government, which is to protect each State against invasion, and to defray all necessary expenses of a national war; and to us it is a most painful reflection that after every effort we have ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... myself, for the benefit of the young and inexperienced who may be present, to make such developments as will be of lasting importance to them in their sojourn through this mazy world; for, as Mr. Calhoun once said of the Constitution of the United States, if there be any one man that loves innocent youth better than all others, I claim to be that man. To seduce one into any vicious habit when uncontaminated, is a thing I would scorn to do. And the pleasure which I feel, ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... in this country is a fiction. The Constitution of the United States guarantees to him every right vouchsafed to any individual by the most liberal democracy on the face of the earth, but despite the unusual powers of the Federal Government this agent of the body politic has studiously evaded the duty of safeguarding the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... 2. The Constitution of the United States excludes from the basis of Congressional representation "Indians not taxed," without further ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... must carry it on, according to the laws of war; and by the laws of war, an invaded country has all its laws and municipal institutions swept by the board, and martial law takes the place of them. This power in Congress has, perhaps, never been called into exercise under the present Constitution of the United States. But when the laws of war are in force, what, I ask, is one of those laws? It is this: that when a country is invaded, and two hostile armies are set in martial array, the commanders of both armies have power to emancipate all the slaves in the invaded territory. Nor is this a mere ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... attorney. As the claimant didn't know much of the practical working of the machinery of government, he swallowed this pill and remitted the $25. Here followed a good deal of red tape and international monkeying during which the claimant was alternately taking an oath to support the constitution of the United States, and promising to support the constitution and by-laws of Mr. Fitznoodle. The claimant was constantly assured that his claim was a good one and on these autograph letters written with a type-writer, the war-born veteran ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... I I'm sick of everything this day—I don't believe in the constitution of the United States, including the thirteenth amendment, nor the ten commandments, nor the attraction of gravitation, nor anything ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... locomotive, the steam railway system, and the steamboat, all of which inventions are of American origin. The first three are directly and the last indirectly associated with a patent that was granted by the State of Maryland, in 1787, being the very year of the framing of the Constitution of the United States. In view of the momentous nature of the services which these four inventions have rendered to the material and national interests of the people of the United States, it is to be hoped that neither they nor their origin will be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... Connecticut, was one of the revolutionary fathers. Before the revolution, he was the agent of Connecticut in England; when it broke out he took a zealous part in the cause of the revolted colonies; he was a delegate to Congress from his State when Congress sat in New York, and he aided in framing the Constitution of the United States. Afterwards, he was President of Columbia College from the year 1787 to the year 1800, when, resigning the post, he returned to Stratford, where he died in 1819, at the age of ninety-two. His father, the great-grandfather of the subject of this memoir, was Dr. ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... Greater than Jefferson had appeared John Marshall, greatest of our Chief Justices, like in spirit to that John Marshall Harlan, whose death marked the year which has just closed, of whom his colleagues said that he went to his rest each night with one hand on the Bible and the other on the Constitution of the United States, a description which could almost be transferred to his great predecessor in that court. Moreover, when Lincoln came, Joseph Story, the greatest teacher of law which our country had produced, had only ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... was not at first elected a member of the deputation from Pennsylvania to the convention which framed the Constitution of the United States. But in May, 1787, he was added in order that, in the possible absence of General Washington, there might be some one whom all could agree in calling to the chair.[95] It was fortunate that even an unnecessary reason led to his being chosen, for all future generations would have ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... down to Vera Cruz, and having fortunately escaped the yellow fever then decimating the population, he set sail for Cuba, where he had left the greater part of his collection, going thence to Philadelphia. There he remained a few weeks to make a cursory study of the political constitution of the United States, returning to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... American Revolution, showing the number each State furnished. 9. Battles and Losses of the Revolution. 10. The Declaration of Independence. 11. The Signers of the Declaration of Independence. 12. The Presidents of the Continental Congress. 13. Constitution of the United States. 14. History of the American Flag. 15. Area and Population of the United States. 16. Population of all Cities and Towns in the U. S. having a population of over 10,000. 17. Growth of American Cities having a population ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... should be clearly and plainly instructed by the Court that such an act of war upon the part of Mr. Davis or any other leading man constituted the crime of treason under the Constitution of the United States, would the jury be likely to heed that instruction, and, if the facts were plainly in proof ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... undersigned women of the United States, asserting our faith in the principles of the Declaration of Independence and in the constitution of the United States, proclaiming it as the best form of government in the world, declare ourselves a part of the people of the nation unjustly deprived of the guaranteed and reserved rights belonging to citizens of the United States; because we have never given our consent ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Constitution, and it is that circumstance which makes it urgent that Irish opinion should be evoked upon their future Constitution, and that the Irish Nationalist party should think out its own scheme of Home Rule. The Constitution of the United States contains many self-imposed restrictions upon the powers both of the Central and the State Governments, in the interest of minorities; and nobody accuses the Americans of having ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... distant parts, ipsa adhesione, as it sticks to his boots, into the tavern-room,) without special law, which even the ancient civilians very stupidly declared to be necessary. First, you will remember, it was passionately maintained that the Constitution of the United States does not know the Common Law; and now it is insisted that Common Law (so far as slavery is concerned) is as inherent in the Constitution as the black pigment is in the negro. You cannot wash it out; it inheres physiologically in the Constitution. I tell you, reader, we are fast ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... been one of intense centralization, and Germany and Italy, whose hopes and aspirations were in the same direction, would admit it, while England would not be restrained by anti-slavery sentiment. Indeed, the statesmen of these countries had devoted much time to the study of the Constitution of the United States, knew that it was a compact, and were in complete harmony with the opinions of Mr. Calhoun. There was to be no revolution, for this, though justified by oppression, involved the recognition of some measure ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... problems of reconstruction that claimed the attention of the Negro Congressmen arose from the measures proposing to grant amnesty to the former Confederates who, by a provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, had been declared ineligible to vote and to hold office. In reference to this matter, Jefferson F. Long, a representative from Georgia to the Forty-first Congress, spoke in a manner reflecting the attitude of many of the Negro Congressmen ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... ranks are not published to the world. It is in deference to this principle that the German Bundesrath transacts its business to this day behind closed doors, and it was for an analogous reason that the public was excluded from the sittings of the convention by which the present constitution of the United States was framed. Notices of meetings of the English cabinet and the names of members present appear regularly in the press, but respecting the subjects discussed, the opinions expressed, and the conclusions arrived at not a word is given out, officially or unofficially. ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... politics may likewise be seen in several poems written about the Constitution of the United States; while his literary taste may be measured by his tribute to Kotzebue, the "second Shakespeare," ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... be questioned that either the constitution of the United States is very defective or it has been very grossly misinterpreted by all parties. If the slave States had not held that the States are severally sovereign, and the Constitution of the United States a simple agreement or compact, they would never have seceded; and if the Free States had not confounded ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... the United States; to which are added the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, with Questions and Explanations. By John J. Anderson. New York. Clark & Maynard. 12mo. pp. 312, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... number of important individual rights, which have since been included in many other documents, especially in the constitutions of several of the American states and the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The Bill of Rights is often grouped with the Great Charter, and these two documents, along with several of the Acts of the Parliaments of Charles I accepted by the king, make the principal written elements ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... luxury. But at the worst—I'm just one girl—suppose I were weak and couldn't get on without them? That wouldn't prove that they are right. I'm not so blinded that I can't see that a system by which I profit may still be absolutely wrong. But you always seem to think, Eddie, that it's part of the Constitution of the United States that you should have ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... public place in the District of Columbia, any banner, flag, streamer, sash, or other device having thereon any words or language with reference to the President or the Vice President of the United States, or any words or language with reference to the Constitution of the United States, or the right of suffrage, or right of citizenship, or any words or language with reference to the duties of any executive official or department of the United States, or with reference to any proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States, or with reference ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... accused party in his court; and either through malice, which we do not believe, or through ignorance, which in such a flagrant degree is equally culpable in a judge, he violated one of the most important provisions of the Constitution of the United States.... The privilege of polling the jury has been held to be an absolute right in this State and it is ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... as we have seen, was a movement by the native property interests to work out their own destiny without interference by the trading classes of Great Britain. The Constitution of the United States, the various State Constitutions, and the laws, were, we have set forth, all reflexes of the interests, aims, castes and prejudices of the property owners, as opposed to the non-propertied. At first, the landholders and the shipping merchants were the dictators of laws. Then from these two classes ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... North have been grossly misrepresented. In attacking the system of slavery, they have never recommended any measure or measures conflicting with the Constitution of the United States. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... met, the governments Johnson had instituted were declared to be provisional only, and it set about the work of reconstruction in its own way, imbedding the changed conditions, the fruits of the war, in proposed amendments of the Constitution of the United States, which were ultimately ratified by a sufficient number of States to make them part of the organic frame of ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen
... take too narrow a view of public life. All civilized governments consider themselves bound to perform other duties of an entirely different character from those which pertain to peace and justice. When our fathers framed the constitution of the United States, they gave in the preamble to that instrument an admirable definition of the province of government. This ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... unrepresented) assembled at Philadelphia, where the opening sessions of the first Constitutional Convention were held in this room in Independence Hall, May 14, 1787. George Washington presided during the four months taken to draft the Constitution of the United States. When it was completed on September 17th, it is said that many of the delegates seemed awe-struck and that Washington himself sat with his head bowed in deep meditation. As the Convention adjourned, Franklin, who was then over eighty-one years of age, arose and pointing ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... his native land, the people "rule the roost"; that the government is but their creature and has to dance to music of their making. If the distinguished gentleman had spent his vacation in the hayloft in close communion with a copy of the constitution of the United States and a primary work on political economy, instead of gadding from the pyramids to the Acropolis hunting for small pegs upon which to hang large theories, perhaps he would be able to occasionally ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... impossibility of a much longer adherence to that shadow of a government, the Continental Congress. And even four years afterwards, when every evil had been greatly aggravated, and civil war was added to other calamities, the Constitution of the United States was all but shipwrecked in passing through the ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... speaking, it might be called the city of magnificent intentions. It is located in the district of Colombia—a territory of ten miles square, formed into a separate and detached jurisdiction by the constitution of the United States. The city was laid out by General Washington, and Congress took up its abode there in 1800. The Capitol is situated in an area of twenty-two and a half acres; is a splendid building, on an eminence close to the Potomac ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... would feel, under similar circumstances? Not long ago, a young man escaped from slavery by clinging night and day to the under part of a steamboat, drenched by water, and suffering for food. He was discovered and sent back. If the Constitution of the United States sanctioned such an outrage upon you, what would you think of those who answered your entreaties and remonstrances by saying, "Our fathers made an agreement with the man who robs you of your wages and your freedom. It is law; and it is ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... my own backyard, Charley?" he said. "By the Lord Harry, I will laugh inside my stakes! No man shall prevent me. The Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, and the Continental Congress give me the right. Now what ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... up as a dominating issue, was the cause of two of the three great compromises that entered into the making of the Constitution of the United States (the third, which was the first made, being the concession to the smaller states of equal representation in the Senate). These were the first but not the last of the compromises that were to mark the history of the subject; and, as some clear-headed men of the time perceived, it would have ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... head of his grave to the northward is interred Captain Thomas FitzSimons, a signer of the Constitution of the United States, an officer in the Revolution, a merchant of ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... were sworn "well and truly to try and true deliverance make between the sovereign lord, the king, and the prisoner whom they have in charge; and a true verdict to give according to the evidence and without prejudice." The Constitution of the United States guarantees—not merely to its citizens, but to all persons—a trial before an impartial jury. I have had no ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... policy of the Northern States. Now the negro is a human being, as well as an apprentice or a redemptioner, though the Constitution does not consider him as the equal of either. It is a great mistake to suppose that the Constitution of the United States, as it now exists, recognizes slavery in any manner whatever, unless it be to mark it as an interest that has less than the common claim to the ordinary rights of humanity. In the apportionment, or representation clause, the redemptioner and the apprentice counts each as a man, whereas ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... business in government" is a very good one, not mainly on account of business or government, but on account of the people. Business is not the reason why the United States was founded. The Declaration of Independence is not a business charter, nor is the Constitution of the United States a commercial schedule. The United States—its land, people, government, and business—are but methods by which the life of the people is made worth while. The Government is a servant and never should be anything but a servant. The moment the people ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... that there should be some powerful central government to control all the States. So after a great deal of deliberation a convention was held in Philadelphia over which George Washington presided. After four months of hard work the present Constitution of the United States was given to each State to ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet
... swear, in the presence of Almighty God, to faithfully support the Constitution of the United States, and of the State of New York. So he'p ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... me, as this interesting man talked, that the Constitution of the United States had been made under the dominion of the Newtonian Theory. You have only to read the papers of The Federalist to see that fact written on every page. They speak of the "checks and balances" of the Constitution, ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... must be considered, on the whole, a conservative arrangement. It tends at once to hinder rapid change and also to get rid of that inflexibility or immutability which, in the eyes of Englishmen at least, is a defect in the constitution of the United States." ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... recorded for the information of strangers and posterity that 17,000 Assembled in this Green on the 4th of July 1788 to celebrate the establishment of the Constitution of the United States, and that they departed at an early hour without intoxication or a single quarrel. They drank nothing but Beer and Cyder. Learn Reader to prize these invaluable liquors and to consider them as the companions of those virtues ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... picks up jobs from railroads and contractors for his followers, and shows himself in all ways a true statesman, then his followers are bound in honor to uphold him, just as they're bound to uphold the Constitution of the United States. But if he only looks after his own interests or shows no talent for scenting out jobs or ain't got the nerve to demand and get his share of the good things that are going', his followers may be absolved from their allegiance and they ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... it." M. Guizot, who understands our politics, who knows our history, and whose practical statesmanship and lofty talents render his opinion most valuable, when he declared that "there is not in the Constitution of the United States an element of order, of force, of duration, which Hamilton has not powerfully contributed to introduce into it and to give it a predominance," stated but the simplest truth. Equally correct is his remark, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... not contend that the treaty-making power of the United States does not extend to a final adjustment of a disputed and undefined line of boundary between a State and a foreign nation; but we do insist that no power is granted by the Constitution of the United States to limit or change the boundary of a State or cede a part of its territory without its consent. It is even by no means certain how far such consent would enable the treaty authority to exert its powers. Citizens might be made the subjects of a treaty transfer, and these citizens owing allegiance ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution of the United States and the said sections ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... Hamilton and others thought it advisable to disguise their purposes, there is no doubt that the Annapolis Convention was an all-important step in the progress of reform, and its recommendation was the direct occasion of the calling of the great convention that framed the Constitution of the United States. ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... was called—ruin were a fitter name for it—had just begun. The South was imprisoned, awaiting the executioner. The Constitution of the United States hung in the balance. The Federal Union faced the threat of sectional despotism. The spirit of the time was martial law. The gospel of proscription ruled in Congress. Radicalism, vitalized by the murder of Abraham Lincoln and inflamed by ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... upon which our government is built. After the thirteen original colonies had established their independence they formed a central government known and expressed in the Constitution of the United States which ...
— Citizenship - A Manual for Voters • Emma Guy Cromwell
... the said act that the delegates elected as aforesaid should, after they had met and organized, declare on behalf of the people of North Dakota that they adopt the Constitution of the United States, whereupon the said convention should be authorized to form a constitution and State government for the proposed State of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... Jurisdiction of the federal Courts Different Cases of Jurisdiction Procedure of the federal Courts High Rank of the supreme Courts among the great Powers of the State In what Respects the federal Constitution is superior to that of the States Characteristics which distinguish the federal Constitution of the United States of America from all other federal Constitutions Advantages of the federal System in General, and its special Utility in America Why the federal System is not adapted to all Peoples, and how the Anglo-Americans were ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... papers." (2) After he has resided in the United States for five years, providing two years have elapsed since his "declaration of intention," he may secure his certificate of naturalization. He must appear in open court and swear that he will support the Constitution of the United States, and renounce all allegiance to any foreign power. Two witnesses must testify to his term of residence, and declare that he is a man of good moral character. The applicant must be able to speak the English language. His wife, and those of his children ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... Webster say the Union would be if the doctrine of State Sovereignty should be accepted? 5. What action had the citizens of Boston taken in 1809? 6. What was the resolution of the Virginia Convention on adopting the Constitution of the United States? 7. Who wrote ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... responsibility and power will be stigmatized by "old-fashioned Democrats" as dangerously despotic; and it may be admitted that in the case of the central government, any official increase of executive power might bring with it the risk of usurpation. The Constitution of the United States has made the President a much more responsible and vigorous executive in his own sphere of action than are the governors of the several states in theirs; and he can with his present power exercise a tolerably effective ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly |
