第72章
Besides, the theory is the reverse of the fact.The State does not surrender or part with its sovereignty by coming into the Union, but acquires by it all the rights it holds as a State.
Between the original States and the new States there is a difference of mode by which they become States in the Union, but none in their powers, or the tenure by which they hold them.The process by which new States are actually formed and admitted into the Union, discloses at once what it is that is gained or lost by admission.The domain and population, before the organization of the Territory into one of the United States, are subject to the United States, inseparably attached to the domain of the Union, and under its sovereignty.The Territory so remains, organized or unorganized, under a Territorial Government created by Congress.Congress, by an enabling act, permits it to organize as a State, to call a convention to form a State constitution, to elect under it, in such way as the convention ordains, State officers, a State legislature, and, in the way prescribed by the Constitution of the United States, senators and representatives in Congress.Here is a complete organization as a State, yet, though called a State, it is no State at all, and is simply territory, without a single particle of political power.To be a State it must be recognized and admitted by Congress as a State in the Union, and when so recognized and admitted it possesses, in union with the other United States, supreme political sovereignty, jointly in all general matters, and individually in all private and particular matters.
The Territory gives up no sovereign powers by coming into the Union, for before it came into the Union it had no sovereignty, no political rights at all.All the rights and powers it holds are held by the simple fact that it has become a State in the Union.This is as true of the original States as of the new States; for it has been shown in the chapter on The United States, that the original British sovereignty under which the colonies were organized and existed passed, on the fact of independence, to the States United, and not to the States severally.Hence if nine States had ratified the constitution, and the other four had stood out, and refused to do it, which was within their competency, they would not have been independent sovereign States, outside of the Union, but Territories under the Union.
Texas forms the only exception to the rule that the States have never been independent of the Union.All the other new States have been formed from territory subject to the Union.This is true of all the States formed out of the Territory of the Northwest, and out of the domain ceded by France, Spain, and Mexico to the United States.All these cessions were held by the United States as territory immediately subject to the Union, before being erected into States; and by far the larger part is so held even yet.But Texas was an independent foreign state, and was annexed as a State without having been first subjected as territory to the United States.It of course lost by annexation its separate sovereignty.But this annexation was held by many to be unconstitutional; it was made when the State sovereignty theory had gained possession of the Government, and was annexed as a State instead of being admitted as a State formed from territory belonging to the United States, for the very purpose of committing the nation to that theory.Its annexation was the prologue, as the Mexican war was the first act in the secession drama, and as the epilogue is the suppression of the rebellion on Texan soil.Texas is an exceptional case, and forms no precedent, and cannot be adduced as invalidating the general rule.Omitting Texas, the simple fact is, the States acquire all their sovereign powers by being States in the Union, instead of losing or surrendering them.
Our American statesmen have overlooked or not duly weighed the facts in the case, because, holding the origin of government in compact, they felt no need of looking back of the constitution to find the basis of that unity of the American people which they assert.Neither Mr.Madison nor Mr.Webster felt any difficulty in asserting it as created by the convention of , or in conceding the sovereignty of the States prior to the Union, and denying its existence after the ratification of the constitution.
If it were not that they held that the State originates in convention or the social compact, there would be unpardonable presumption on the part of the present writer in venturing to hazard an assertion contrary to theirs.But, if their theory was unsound, their practical doctrine was not; for they maintained that the American people are one sovereign people, and Mr.Quincy Adams, an authority inferior to neither, maintained that they were always one people, and that the States hold from the Union, not the Union from the States.The States without the Union cease to exist as political communities: the Union without the States ceases to be a Union, and becomes a vast centralized and consolidated state, ready to lapse from a civilized into a barbaric, from a republican to a despotic nation.
The State, under the American system, as distinguished from Territory, is not in the domain and population fixed to it, nor yet in its exterior organization, but solely in the political powers, rights, and franchises which it holds from the United States, or as one of the United States.As these are rights, not obligations, the State may resign or abdicate them and cease to be a State, on the same principle that any man may abdicate or forego his rights.In doing so, the State breaks no oath of allegiance, fails to fulfil no obligation she contracted as a State: she simply forgoes her political rights and franchises.