Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

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[103] approval and ratification of the people of the states, it would have been, as Madison expressed it, “of no more consequence than the paper on which it was written.” It was never submitted to “the people of the United States in the aggregate,” or as a people. Indeed, no such political community as the people of the United States in the aggregate exists at this day or ever did exist. Senators in Congress confessedly represent the states as equal units. The House of Representatives is not a body of representatives of “the people of the United States,” as often erroneously asserted; but the Constitution, in the second section of its first article, expressly declares that it “shall be composed of members chosen by the people of the several States.”

Nor is it true that the President and Vice-President are elected, as it is sometimes vaguely stated, by vote of the “whole people” of the Union. Their election is even more unlike what such a vote would be than that of the representatives, who in numbers at least represent the strength of their respective states. In the election of President and Vice-President the Constitution (Article Ii) prescribes that “each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors” for the purpose of choosing a President and Vice-President. The number of these electors is based partly upon the equal sovereignty, partly upon the unequal population of the respective states.

It is, then, absolutely true that there has never been any such thing as a vote of “the people of the United States in the aggregate”; no such people is recognized by the Constitution; no such political community has ever existed. It is equally true that no officer or department of the general government formed by the Constitution derives authority from a majority of the whole people of the United States, or has ever been chosen by such majority. As little as any others is the United States government a government of a majority of the mass.