that the United States should guarantee to every state a republican form
of government. It declared that the Constitution and the laws of the
United States made in pursuance thereof, and treaties, should be the
supreme law of the land. It provided a method for its own amendment.
Save for a few other brief clauses, that was all. There was no
proclamation of Democracy; no trumpet blast about the rights of man such
as had sounded in the Declaration of Independence. On the contrary, the
instrument expressly recognized human slavery, though in discreet and
euphemistic phrases.

Wherein, then, did the novelty and greatness of the Constitution lie?
Its novelty lay in the duality of the form of government which it
created--a nation dealing directly with its citizens and yet composed of
sovereign states--and in its system of checks and balances. The world
had seen confederations of states. It was familiar with nations
subdivided into provinces or other administrative units. It had known
experiments in pure democracy. The constitutional scheme was none of
these. It was something new, and its novel features were relied upon as
a protection from the evils which had developed under the other plans.
The greatness of the Constitution lay in its nice adjustment of the
powers of government, notably the division of powers which it effected
between the National Government and the states. The powers conferred on
the National Government were clearly set forth. All were of a strictly
national character. They covered the field of foreign relations,
interstate and foreign commerce, fiscal and monetary system, post office
and post roads, patents and copyrights, and jurisdiction over certain
specified crimes. All other powers were reserved to the states or the
people. In other words, the theory was (to quote Bryce's "The American
Commonwealth") "local government for local affairs; general government
for general affairs only."