The State was the natural agency for the protection of the individual
in this hour of danger. To an alarmed resident of Delaware, Jefferson
offered an asylum in the State of Virginia, where the "laws of the
land, administered by upright judges, would protect you from any
exercise of power unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States.
The _habeas corpus_ secures every man here, alien or citizen, against
everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume."
Browbeaten, as Jefferson explained later, by a bold and overwhelming
majority in Congress, the Republicans resolved to retire from that
field, and to take a stand in their State Legislatures. The legislative,
rather than the executive or judicial branch of the States, represented
the people of the United States dwelling in the various States. The
State Legislatures had sent delegates to form the Constitution, and
the State Legislatures had called the State conventions which adopted
it. In the State Legislatures the true friends of the Union, as the
Jeffersonians called themselves, would endeavour to find an agency for
protection against the unwarranted attack of the National Government.
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