There is no doubt that all the powers exercised by the General Government, though embracing all foreign relations and all general interests and relations of all the States, might have been exercised by it under the authority of a mutual compact of the several States, and practically the difference between the compact theory and the national view would be very little, unless in cases like that of secession.On the supposition that the American people are one political people, the government would have the right to treat secession, in the sense in which the seceders understand it, as rebellion, and to suppress it by employing all the physical force at its command; but on the compact theory it would have no such right.But the question now under discussion turns simply on what has been and is the historical fact.Before the States could enter into the compact and delegate sovereign powers to the Union, they must have severally possessed them.It is historically certain that they did not possess them before independence; they did not obtain them by independence, for they did not severally succeed to the British sovereignty, to which they succeeded only as States united.When, then, and by what means did they or could they become severally sovereign States? The United States having succeeded to the British sovereignty in the Anglo-American colonies, they came into possession of full national sovereignty, and have alone held and exercised it ever since independence became a fact.The States severally succeeding only to the colonies, never held, and have never been competent to delegate sovereign powers.
The old Articles of Confederation, it is conceded, were framed on the assumption that the States are severally sovereign; but the several States, at the same time, were regarded as forming one nation, and, though divided into separate States, the people were regarded as one people.The Legislature of New York, as early as , calls for an essential change In the Articles of Confederation, as proved to be inadequate to secure the peace, security, and prosperity of "the nation." All the proceedings that preceded and led to the call of the convention of were based on the assumption that the people of the United States were one people.The States were called united, not confederated States, even in the very Articles of Confederation themselves, and officially the United States were called "the Union." That the united colonies by independence became united States, and formed really one and only one people, was in the thought, the belief, the instinct of the great mass of the people.They acted as they existed through State as they had previously acted through colonial organization, for in throwing off the British authority there was no other organization through which they could act.The States, or people of the States, severally sent their delegates to the Congress of the United States, and these delegates adopted the rule of voting in Congress by States, a rule that might be revived without detriment to national unity.
Nothing was more natural, then, than that Congress, composed of delegates elected or appointed by States, should draw up articles of confederation rather than articles of union, in order, if for no other reason, to conciliate the smaller States, and to prevent their jealousy of the larger States such as Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania.
Moreover, the Articles of Confederation were drawn up and adopted during the transition from colonial dependence to national independence.Independence was declared in , but it was not a fact till l, when the preliminary treaty acknowledging it was signed at Paris.Till then the United States were not an independent nation; they were only a people struggling to become an independent nation.Prior to that preliminary treaty, neither the Union nor the States severally were sovereign.The articles were agreed on in Congress in , but they were not ratified by all the States till May, , and in the movement was commenced in the Legislature of New York for their amendment.
Till the organization under the constitution ordained by the people of the United States in l, and which went into operation in , the United States had in reality only a provisional government, and it was not till then that the national government was definitively organized, and the line of demarcation between the General Government and the particular State governments was fixed.
The Confederation was an acknowledged failure, and was rejected by the American people, precisely because it was not in harmony with the unwritten or Providential constitution of the nation;and it was not in harmony with that constitution precisely because it recognized the States as severally sovereign, and substituted confederation for union.The failure of confederation and the success of union are ample proofs of the unity of the American nation.The instinct of unity rejected State sovereignty in as it did in .The first and the last attempt to establish State sovereignty have failed, and the failure vindicates the fact that the sovereignty is in the States united, not in the States severally.
