Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/504

 494 Southern Historical Society Papers.

one government," and "cease to be Maryland and Virginia, Massa- chusetts and Carolina." He saw that "the people" were "the States " and " the States " " the people"; and that the real govern- ment was the republics, or self- governors, named in the Constitution.

Curtis, the most conspicuous living advocate of the pseudo nation, said Rhode Island had after independence, and of course up to her adoption of the Constitution, " absolute sovereignty." [II Hist. Const' n, 599]

Again : — " The meeting of the States [to form a Constitution] was purely voluntary : they met as equals, and they were sovereign po- litical communities, whom no power could rightfully coerce into a change of their condition." [^Ibid.'\

Again: — "The relations of the individual to the political society, of which he is a member, * * came into existence as soon as a sovereign American State was formed out of a revoked British colony." [Let. to N. Y. World, 1869.]

Again : — " The source of fundamental law is found in the sovereign authority of the people of a distinct State to order the political con- ditions of society. It cannot be doubted that this is the very highest of all human authority." [Ibid^

Hundreds of pages of such proofs and admissions as the above could be given, and American History contains nothing to the con- trary. "The people" then were Republics; i. <?. , societies of people, governing themselves ; all governmental functionaries, State or Fed- eral, being their servants and agents, and not above them.

The societies, New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, et als., being complete and independent, and named in the Constitution, were likened to pillars voluntarily taking their place in an edifice, or to stars of a constellation. As entities, they were as separate as stars. Let us then symbolize the States by thirteen stars in a row, thus designating the people of the United States ; i. <?., the thirteen Re- publics, or States, at the time when all agreed and guaranteed that each was sovereign, and when they were together proceeding to devise the Constitution, which they afterwards established by separate adoptions; and next, below the thirteen symbols, we will draw the line indicating the Federal Constitution, they, as sovereigns, devised and established. The next line below will be the tripartite govern- ment; and, lastly, will come the subjects of government, viz : the people and their belongings.

This is intended to be —