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Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 1. (ed. Frank Moore), chapter 152 (search)
decrees of the Federal Council to the States in their sovereign capacity. The great and incurable defect of all former Federal Governments, such as the Amphictyonic, Achaean, and Lycian Confederacies, and the Germanic, Helvetic, Hanseatic, and Dutch Republics, is that they were sovereignties over sovereignties. The first effort to relieve the people of the country from this state of national degradation and ruin came from Virginia. The general convention afterwards met at Philadelphia in May, 1787. The plan was submitted to a convention of delegates chosen by the people at large in each State for assent and ratification. Such a measure was laying the foundations of the fabric of our national polity where alone they ought to be laid,--on the broad consent of the people. --1 Kent, 225. It is true that the consent of the people was given by the inhabitants voting in each State; but in what other conceivable way could the people of the whole country have voted? They assembled in t
Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Documents and Narratives, Volume 1. (ed. Frank Moore), chapter 245 (search)
d difficulties they encountered. They found that their Government was so imperfect as to be inadequate to the great ends of all Governments, as laid down in their Declaration of the 4th of July, 1776, and that it had therefore become their duty to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them should seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. The Convention which assembled in May, 1787, at Philadelphia, and which immortalized itself in the Constitution of the United States, thoroughly reflected the will of those whom they represented. They framed that Constitution in the name and on behalf of the people of the United States, and not of the several States, as separate and distinct sovereignties. In the debates had in that Convention, on the formation of the Constitution, the following language was used by that distinguished son of Virginia, James Madison: Some con