. . .that the several States
composing the United States of America, are
not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general
government; but that
by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United
States and of
amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special
purposes, delegated
to that government certain definite powers, reserving each State to
itself, the residuary
mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the
general government
assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of
no force:
–Thomas Jefferson, The Kentucky Resolutions, Nov. 16, 1798