The several states, however, train their own militia and appoint
the officers. Congress may also establish a uniform rule of
naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies. It
also exercises exclusive control over the District of Columbia,[23]
as the seat of the national government, and over forts, magazines,
arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings, which it erects
within the several states upon land purchased for such purposes with
the consent of the state legislature.
[Footnote 23: Ceded to the United States by Maryland and Virginia.]
[Sidenote: The "Elastic Clause."]
Congress is also empowered "to make all laws which shall be necessary
and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all
other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the
United States, or in any department or office thereof." This may be
called the Elastic Clause of the Constitution; it has undergone a
good deal of stretching for one purpose and another, and, as we shall
presently see, it was a profound disagreement in the interpretation of
this clause that after 1789 divided the American people into two great
political parties.
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