Constitution was not again amended until after the close of the Civil
War, when Amendments XIII, XIV, and XV, having for their primary object
the protection of the newly enfranchised Negroes, were adopted. The
Constitution was not again amended until the last decade, when the
Income Tax Amendment, the amendment providing for the election of
Senators by popular vote, the Prohibition Amendment, and the Woman
Suffrage Amendment were adopted in rapid succession. Some of these will
be discussed in later chapters.

It is interesting to note that two of the amendments (No. XI, designed
to prevent suits against a state without its permission by citizens of
another state, and No. XVI, paving the way for the Income Tax) were
called forth by unpopular decisions of the Supreme Court, and virtually
amounted to a recall of those decisions by the people. These instances
demonstrate the possibility of a recall of judicial decisions by
constitutional methods, and tend to refute impatient reformers who
preach the necessity of a more summary procedure. Such questions,
however, lie outside the scope of this book. We emphasize here the fact
that the great achievement of the Constitution was the creation of a
dual system of government and the apportionment of its powers. That was
what made it "one of the longest reaches of constructive statesmanship
ever known in the world."[1] It offered the most promising solution yet
devised for the problem of building a nation without tearing down local
self-government.

[Footnote 1: Fiske: "The Critical Period of American History," p. 301.]

John Fiske, the historian, writing of the importance of preserving the
constitutional equilibrium between nation and states, said:[1]