James Madison Unions Quotations

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence.

there ought always to be a constitutional method of giving efficacy to constitutional provisions. What for instance would avail restrictions on the authority of the state legislatures, without some constitutional mode of enforcing the observance of them? . . . This power must either be a direct negative on the state laws, or an authority in the federal courts, to over-rule such as might be in manifest contravention of the articles of union.

Security against foreign danger is one of the primitive objects of civil society. It is an avowed and essential object of the American Union.

The public affairs of the union are spread throughout a very extensive region, and are extremely diversified by the local affairs connected with them, and can with difficulty be learnt in any other place, than in the central councils, to which a knowledge of them will be brought by the representatives of every part of the empire. Yet some knowledge of the affairs, and even of the laws of all the states, ought to be possessed by the members from each of the states.

In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the disease incident to republican government.

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.

The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated.