New Views of the Constitution of the United States

A classic defense of states’ rights in the literature of the early republic by John Taylor of Caroline.  The book was published in 1823, a year before the author’s death.  The book was intended to be one last thought about the nature of the American union.  The essential question Taylor asks is, “What is the American form of government — national or federal?”  Taylor, in line with his Jeffersonian roots and reputation as a proponent of a separation of powers, answers, “federal.”  We are, he says, a federation of independent sovereign states, not a consolidated nation.