Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/505

Rh

Which is probably the most signal, but highly respectable, blunder in history, since its authors and supporters are the very highest of the professed expounders ol the Constitution— some of them being the sworn officials charged with protecting the lives and sovereignty of their masters and principals — the American Republics.

"The People of the United States," i. e., the 13 Republics in 1787.

1 *************

2

3

4

Now, no one will dare to deny that this is the proper collocation of the grades of political authority, for the States did actually and voluntarily devise and establish the Constitution, while there was, out of them, no acre or man for a nation; and all statements of national mind or action in the premises are false. The States filed the separate ratifications, which the Constitution itself declared "sufficient for the establishment" thereof, in the archives of Congress, there to remain and eternally belie the national theory. We can neither assert the acts of the States out of the record nor argue State seals from the bond.

Provinces achieved independence and statehood. Afterwards they agreed and guaranteed that each State was sovereign. Each must have acted in such character through the making of the Constitution. The status of each must have continued thereafter.

It is absurd to suppose they did not retain sovereignty, to effectuate their own purpose of governing their subjects. Again, they began their work with their own "absolute supremacy"; they could not foolishly subject themselves to the "absolute supremacy" of their constituted agency.

Surely, they could not begin as States and end as provinces, achieving statehood by bloody revolution, and soon swapping it for countyhood. It cannot be that they violently severed themselves from one nation to become subordinate parts of another— exchanging a personal king for a corporate one.