Upshur's Brief Enquiry (1840) critiques Joseph Story's highly esteemed Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States and its support of strong centralized government. Upshur instead describes the Constitution as a compact created by a confederation of individual, sovereign states, each possessing the power to interpose on behalf of its citizens against the federal government and, if necessary, to withdraw from it.
The work was originally published without chapter breaks, but a 1868 edition added them. The text included here is from an 1863 reprint of the original (page scans are available), and both viewing options are presented—the complete work on one page, as in the original, and the work separated into chapters.
The page numbers match the original 1840 edition.
