A BRIEF ENQUIRY INTO THE TRUE NATURE AND CHARACTER OF OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: BEING A REVIEW OF JUDGE STORY'S COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. BY A VIRGINIAN

Petersburg: Edmund and Julian C. Ruffin, 1840. 132pp. Rebound in modern black cloth with red cloth gilt-titled spine. Light scattered foxing. Institutional blind stamp at title page. Good+.

Upshur, the Virginia State-Rights jurist, would succeed Daniel Webster as President Tyler's Secretary of State. In that august capacity he died in 1844, when the battleship Princeton exploded. His work is a classic expression of the Virginia Strict Construction view of the relationship between States and National Government, and the limited sphere of the latter's authority; and, with the works of John Taylor of Caroline, among the most influential.
Rejecting majoritarianism, Jacksonian democracy, and the concept of Natural Law, Upshur claims "a complete refutation of the nationalistic theory of the Constitution." It was reprinted in 1863 by Northern Democrats as a means of "setting forth the political philosophy of the Confederacy" [DAB]. The copyright was entered by Upshur's ideological soul mate, Edmund Ruffin, who printed the work.
FIRST EDITION. Howes U24. Cohen 2947. II Harv. Law Cat. 827. Haynes 19533.