The phrase "united states of America" meant just what the phrase "united states of Europe" would have done an association of sovereignties. "The united states of America" was an association of republics, or of communities, which possessed respectively the absolute right of self-government-i. e. sovereignty.

No "People," as such, were to ordain. But the argument is still stronger; for not only were the states to ratify, and, consequently, to ordain the constitution, through their respective conventions, but "the people" were not to vote or decide on the constitution at all, and they never did so in any mode, either directly or indirectly. On the contrary, they, as citizens and voters of states, under laws of the states, elected delegates, who, in convention assembled, were, in behalf of the state they were the convention of, to examine and discuss, and then, according to their discretion, ratify or reject the constitution. Each state, through her own convention, ratified. The constitution was ordained in this way, or never at all, for no other expression of the people's will on it was ever made. May we not venture, then, to call the ordaining instruments ordinances? Mr. G. T. Curtis thinks they are not ordinances, but more like deeds or grants. I shall notice the point hereafter.

Is not the reason now apparent why Story, Everett, Motley, Curtis, and others ignore or suppress the action of the states, and especially the above ordinances? and why, when they are forced to notice the latter, they garble them, as they will presently be shown to have done? If they admit that the states enacted the above instruments, and that thus alone was life and validity given to the constitution, and existence and authority to the government, they admit the entire incorrectness of the counter-statement, which all of them have repeatedly made; to wit, that the nation ordained the constitution, and that, as it is "the supreme law of the land," "state sovereignty is effectually controlled" by it.

IF

CHAPTER III.

FALSE EVIDENCE OF ESTABLISHMENT.

INTERPRETATION No. 2.- THE CONSTITUTION NATIONAL.

F one of the expounders be asked for proof of the "establishment of the constitution," he asks in return, "What does it say of itself?" [Webster,] and immediately answers from the preamble: "We, the people, . . . do ordain and establish," and he further says this means "the people as a nation." This deception necessitates various others, which are to be exposed herein.

...

Now, it is of vital importance that the people should understand the source of constitutional authority; or, in other words, who it was that effected "the establishment of this constitution," and was the source of its existence and power. There must be some precise and conclusive evidence on a subject of such paramount importance. And yet, on this very subject, the said expounders have most industriously, though perhaps unintentionally, taught false ideas, and caused confused notions in the popular mind. If they had really desired, in good faith, to make a truthful pictorial impression, they should have affixed to the compact the names of the states and their ordaining words, these indicating precisely what gave life to it. [See Part II., Chapter XIII.] As far as it goes, the constitution is the evidence of whatever system was established, i. e. whether it was federal or national. But something more is necessary. It would be pettifogging folly to offer an instrument as evidence of the parties to it, or of the extent of their obligations, which lawyers had, under instructions, drawn for the said principals, and had signed, not to adopt, but to authenticate and recommend as their plan, but which the principals had never signed or sanctioned. Such instrument would simply show what the plan was, and who devised and recommended it for adoption, but not bind the principals contemplated. Now, how is the execution and binding force of such instrument to be shown? Simply by proving the acts that gave it existence and validity. If the constitution were not of the class of political facts, of which the courts take cognizance without proof, the only possible evidence of its being in force in any given state, would be that state's act of ratification.

Proving this would be, in legal effect, like proving, by the party's signature or otherwise, the execution of any other instrument.

The new System "done" only by States. Now we prove each ratifying ordinance as an absolute fact. We equally prove, as a fact, that each was "done" by and for a state. Hence, as no other source of life and power is shown, we establish it as a fact that the constitution was "done," i. e. ordained and established," by thirteen states, as their frame of general government, and as "the supreme law of the land." This precisely accords with the provision of Article VII., that the "ratifications" of "nine states" are to "be sufficient for the establishment of this constitution, between the states so [i. e. by conventions] ratifying the same." No "ratifying" or "establishing" but that of states, that is, communities of people, could have been contemplated. It was thus that the "deed" to use Daniel Webster's phrase - was to become "executed." It was thus that the thirteen "moral persons," called states, were to form the republic of republics -"the united states."

It is absolutely untrue that the convention of 1787 represented, and acted for, a nation, in "making a distribution" of the said nation's "powers between their general government and their several state governments;" and "reserving to the states" the rights and powers they were thereafter to possess. The states made "the constitution of the united states," created the government, delegated its only powers, and reserved all not delegated; and necessarily the only restrictions upon states are their voluntary ones. They are self-associated bodies, "united states."

All the history and records of the country, without the exception of a line, word, or syllable, aid in proving the last proposition, while no line, word, or syllable of the said history and records can be produced to prove that a nation established our constitution of general government!

INTERPRETATION No. 3.-JUDGE STORY'S NEW ARTICLE.

If we judge from what the expounders have added to the constitution, their "construction" means building or fabricating. The ingenuity of the above-named commentator has given us a most important addition.

When on the 17th of September, 1787, the deputies of the American states, in convention, published the plan for "the federal government of these states," they affixed their signatures, by states, in order to authenticate the plan, and to recommend it. Nobody ever ventured to say, in so many words, that the convention ordained, or that it had

any more than mere advisory authority; but the peculiar circumstances of the case afforded an opening for perversion. In his Commentaries, Volume II., § 1856, Judge Story says: "And here closes our review of the constitution, in the original form in which it is framed for, and adopted by, the people of the united states. The concluding passage of it is: 'Done in convention, by the unanimous consent of all the states present, the 17th day of September, 1787.' . . . At the head of the illustrious men who framed and signed, stands the name of George Washington." This is a sample of Judge Story's exposition; and the phrase I have italicized, as well as the impression made, is entirely without foundation. Nobody - not even Judge Story could prove that the words quoted were "the concluding passage of the constitution!" [See V. Ell. Deb. 536, 555, 564.] Sheep follow Bell-Wethers. - In all American books the constitution is invariably published as "Done in convention, by the unanimous consent of the states present ;" and the names of the deputies are affixed. It is published thus strange to say - in the book of Mr. A. H. Stephens. The people are thus pictorially impressed with the idea, that then, there, and by those men, the constitution was "done." [See Part II., Ch. XIII.]

Men are naturally gregarious, and each flock must have a bellwether. When a man like Story becomes accepted as a leader, his grex discipulorum thenceforward seem to think they need but follow and swallow. Many pages could here be quoted from men who think, and many more from that immense class who mistakenly think they think, to show a very general adoption of the above false idea of the origin of our federal system; for example, the New York World of April Sth, 1864, said, "The constitution was a federal compact, done in convention by the unanimous consent of the states present." The so-called Massachusetts school, generally, pretend to regard the "consent " referred to, as the basis of the federal constitution, though they know the function of the convention was merely to make a plan; and that the real and only consent, and vitalizing force, was given by states, and through the separate conventions of these bodies. And they intimate, rather than broadly assert, that the people of the states, by ratifying, consented to take place and rank, as fractional parts of a nation, much as companies, by order, merge themselves in a regiment, or divisions in an army. Indeed, Daniel Webster, in his speech of 1833, and George T. Curtis, in his letters to the New York World, in 1867, speak of this very consent, as the forming of a national society by social compact. Such is the "interpretation" of the "school!"

The Blind leading the Blind. This seems to be not only the view of Story, Webster, and Curtis, but it is the idea of Buchanan,

Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, Reverdy Johnson, Robert J. Walker, Geo. H. Pendleton, et omne genus, as well as of all those "black spirits and white, red spirits and gray," that "mingled" in the Philadelphia convention of 1866. To show how these able and generally conservative men, being deluded themselves, mislead the people, I quote the following from a speech of the last-named — who is one of the most distinguished of the alumni of the Massachusetts school at Bangor, Maine, in 1868: "I bow myself in reverence before the form of government which has bound these mighty states together, and which has reconciled their different and discordant interests into the harmony of one people, and one government. The men of 1787 were self-denying men. They feared consolidation of power. They put behind them all the allurements of imperial pomp. They denied themselves the fascinations of a strong government. They contented themselves with the simplicity of confederation. They committed to the federal government inter-state and international affairs. All the rest, they reserved to the states themselves. Within this narrow sphere, they made the federal government supreme. All beyond remained to the unimpaired sovereignty of the several states." The italics are my

own.

Nay, more, there is hardly The "public convictions," inveterate, that some high

These are substantially the views of the most of the conservative men and presses of the Massachusetts school. an inharmonious buzz in the whole hive. caused by their teachings, seem to be authority, other than the states, distributed powers to the general and state governments; giving supremacy to the former, so that to the extent of its powers, "state sovereignty "— to use Webster's phrase "is effectually controlled." All this is not only sophistical, but untrue, and so fully contradicted by our history, that it cannot be innocently repeated by one who is not ignorant of the subject.

INTERPRETATION No. 4. THE STATES NOT NAMED.

That the states are not named in the constitution is a common assertion hard to account for; though, in politics and war, fictions are often better for temporary use than facts; and in 1861, Everett, Motley, and others evidently saw that the "public convictions" needed strengthening by statements not strictly historical.

I shall simply quote the gentlemen named, and then quote the constitution, leaving the reader to decide between them.

Mr. Everett said [see I. Rebellion Record, 9] "That instrument does not purport to be a compact, but a constitution of government. It appears in its first sentence, not to have been entered into by the