Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/45

Rh but from the concurrent action of a prescribed number of States, each acting separately and pretending to no claim or right to act for or control other States. That each of these States had the right to decline to ratify and remain out of the Union for all time to come, no sane man will deny. Rhode Island and North Carolina did, in the undoubted exercise of an undisputed right, refuse to enter the compact until after the government was organized and Washington entered upon his duties as president. &quot;The assent and ratification of the people,&quot; says Madison, &quot;not as individuals composing an entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they belong, are the sources of the Constitution. It is, therefore, not a national but a federal compact.&quot;

Virginia, in her ratification as a distinct, sovereign community, had said: &quot;The delegates do, in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will.&quot; (5 Bulletin of the Bureau of Rolls, 145.) Calhoun s Works, 248-251.

Maryland declared that nothing in the Constitution &quot;warrants a construction that the States do not retain every power not expressly relinquished by them and vested in the general government of the Union.&quot; New York more explicitly said: &quot;That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whenever it should become necessary to their happiness, that every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States or the departments of the government thereof, remains to the people of the several States, or to their respective State governments, to whom they may have granted the same; and that those clauses in the