He urged the federal government to resist interfering with state power that is written into the Constitution and went so far as to say that the extension of federal power could be troublesome when it was applied to issues such as slavery. Woodbury warned that overextending federal powers would lead to "a struggle for jurisdiction between courts of the states and courts of the United States, always delicate, and frequently endangering the harmony of our political system."Waring v. Clarke, 46 U.S. 441, 473
