John Adams Dix Quotes
It is well known that this was one of the most delicate questions involved in the formation of the Constitution. Like every other of the same difficult character, it was disposed of in the general compromise of interests, which were the subject of deliberation and adjustment, and it is not too much to say, that the Union could never have been formed if the right of interference with this question, on the part of the General Government, had been insisted on.
Dix finally broke with the Democrats over the slavery question and became a Republican.
John Adams Dix, 1798-1879, U. S. Senator (Democrat, NY), U. S. Secretary of the Treasury, U.S. Minister to France, Governor of New York (Republican), Statement to a group of NY constituents who visited him in Washington, 1839
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The 10th Amendment was created to take care of this objection which Jefferson and many others had.
Jackson was reacting to the claimed right of South Carolina to nullify Federal tariffs and other Federal laws.
Anti-slavery opponents had cited the equality argument of the Declaration of Independence to buttress their argument.
Most of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were aristocrats, and all were elites of different types. However, they wanted and knew that they would have to submit their work product to the people for ratification. So while each had their own views, most were heavily influenced by their perception of public opinion reaction to their draft. Even with that, in order to get the ratification votes, they had to add the first 10 amendments—the Bill of Rights in order to get the votes of the men who were NOT at the convention.
As this passage makes clear, the Southern States would not accede to a Union unless they had more representation than the larger Northern states. Thus the infamous three-fifths clause. This meant that white slave owners had proportionally more representatives in Congress and more votes in the Electoral College than whites in the Northern States. This artificial majority kept slavery from being abolished until the Civil War.
In February of 1861, in a last ditch effort to hold the Union together the Senator offered this proposed Constitutional amendment which would not only guarantee the existence of slavery in the South, but would assure that there could be no later Constitutional amendment to do so—the so-called "unamendable amendment." Surprising to us today is the fact that this amendment was not only supported by incoming President Abraham Lincoln, but was passed by the required two-thirds of both houses of Congress. However, before it could be ratified by the States, events overtook the amendment, the South seceded, and the Civil War began.
On June 12, 1789 a Senate committee proposed a federal court system for the nation. Maclay described it as:
In the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the delegates agreed that the there would be no official transcript and that the debates were to be kept secret:
John Adams Dix was Secretary of the Treasury, Governor of New York and Union major general during the Civil War. He was notable for arresting the pro-Southern Maryland General Assembly, preventing that divided border state from seceding, and for arranging a system for prisoner exchange via the Dix–Hill Cartel, concluded in partnership with Confederate Major General Daniel Harvey Hill.
