Page:Doctrine of State Rights.djvu/3

 and, if ratified by nine of them, should go into effect as between the States so ratifying it. If only nine consented, what was to become of the other four, and what of the plighted faith to a perpetual union? We are not left to speculation with different numbers; the case did actually occur. Eleven States ratified; two refused: what was to be done? The expedient of raising an army to coerce North Carolina and Rhode Island into an acceptance of the Constitution or new form of government seems not to have occurred to any one of that day, and the situation was especially embarrassing because the thirteenth article provided that the union should be perpetual, and that no alteration should be made in any of the Articles of Confederation, "unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislature of every State."

An easy escape from the dilemma was found; it was to disregard the pledges and prohibitions of Article Thirteen, secede from the confederation styled the United States of America, and form a new government with the same style as the old one. It was anticipated that some of the State legislatures would not confirm this procedure; therefore it was provided by the last article of the proposed new Constitution that the "ratification of the conventions of nine States" should suffice for its establishment "between the States so ratifying the same." It will be observed that the new Constitution was to be submitted for ratification to a higher authority than the Congress and State legislatures, viz., to conventions of the people of the States, the recognized form in which State sovereignty was represented. Mr. Madison, in the forty-third number of The Federalist, notices as a defect of the confederation that it had received no higher sanction than legislative ratification; hence, as provided in the last article of the new Constitution, it was to be submitted to our highest political authority—conventions of the people of the respective States.

That was the supreme authority which, according to the American theory, could alter or abolish their government, and by which, nine States concurring, it was proposed to dissolve the "perpetual union" of the confederation and establish a new one among themselves. In this connection the distinguished member from Massachusetts remarked: "If nine out of thirteen [States] can dissolve the compact, six out of nine will be just as able to dissolve the future one hereafter."