Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/47

Rh zens except in consequence of this adoption; that it was valid as a covenant of union, the federal compact, only as between the States so ratifying the same; are facts alike incontestable. All these acts were by the States and for the States, without any participation on the part of the people regarded in the aggregate as forming a nation. Our controversy arose, not so much from these historical incidents (although historians, judges, editors and congressmen have denied or misinterpreted them all) as from the import and effect and construction of the agreement so formally and cautiously made.

Did the act of ratification of itself, or does the Constitution in its grants, divest the States of their character as separate political communities and merge them all into one nation, one American people? The Constitution superseded the Articles of Confederation because the parties to those articles agreed that it should be so. If they have not so agreed, the articles are still binding on the States. In point of fact the Constitution did become obligatory as a compact of government by the voluntary and separate ratification and adoption of the several States. Massachusetts and New Hampshire, in their ratification, call the Constitution a compact, and the federal Union must be so, or the result of a compact, because sovereign States would not otherwise have agreed and expressed their agreement. Some made provisos, others suggested amendments, which make plain the intention of the fathers in entering the Union. The apprehensions of consolidation were so strong that to guard against such a possible evil, provisions to prevent were incorporated in the acts of assent. The right to resume surrendered powers, as affirmed by three of the States, has been mentioned. Massachusetts, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Virginia were so alarmed at the liability to absorption of unsurrendered powers, that they proposed an amendment to the effect that each State shall respectively retain every power, jurisdiction