Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/501

Rh like a Mosaic pavement. He makes his case of facts, which merely require statement, not argument or interpretation. Our polity is real—factual in all its parts. The opposing theory is figments — assertion without fact. It is speculative or doctrinal.

It is obvious that when a man says this is a "Union of States," he asserts a fact; he tells the truth, for the Constitution itself speaks of the States in this Union—calls the system "the United States," and characterizes all the people as citizens of States. There is, and can be, no exegesis, or interpretation, or construction, or doctrine about this. It is simple truth; but when a man says "these States is a nation," and that the Union is an association of the people into one State, of which "the States is" counties, he simply tells an ungrammatical falsehood! There is no subject of construction. It is simply a matter of fact and history, and he who maintains the contrary must erase the records of heaven, for though truth may be crushed to earth here, it is written down by the recording angel, and it has the guaranty of God that it shall endure through His eternal years! See "The Republic of Republics," pp. 50-58, for a clear exposition of the matter, and an exposure of the fallacy of Mr. George T. Curtis' s "two schools of interpretation."

Again, it is a true assertion that the States themselves devised the Constitution, convening and voting as States in doing so; also that each State ratified the compact by her separate convention; so that the establishing of the Constitution was done by the States; and hence the counter-assertion that the nation made the Constitution, reserving to the States their rights, and imposing delegative duties on them, is entire untruth, and not erroneous construction.

And as the States were preexistent, complete, self-governing societies; as they were named in the first article as political bodies; as, by their ratification, they were to establish the polity, thus becoming, as Hamilton said, "the parties to the compact," or, as Webster said, "the thirteen Confederated States;" as they owned all the votes, and were to elect, commission, and send for Federal duty, their own citizens and subjects; as they were to be and remain for-ever the amenders of the Constitution; as no other potential actors are provided for or hinted at, and, as finally no change whatever is made in these original and designated societies, as to name, geography, people, organism, mode of mental action, or political will, we may well conclude that all assertions as to their being merged in a nation, or degraded from their original statehood, are treasonable falsehoods, instead of mistakes of interpre-