National, to that extent, the People, from whose acquiescence and consent they took effect, must be considered as agreeing to form a Nation."

Judge Story here maintains and clearly shows that the whole people of the United States became one people, one political society, and bound together in one National Government, by the Declaration of Independence, which was one Supreme Sovereign National act, done by the Paramount authority, or Sovereignty of the whole people of all the Colonies, as one Nation, and that all idea of separate State Sovereignty, or of the States ever having been separate, Independent Sovereign powers at any period of their history, is utterly unfounded. That the separate Independence and individual Sovereignty of the several States were never thought of by the enlightened band of patriots, who framed the Declaration of Independence. To my mind his positions are unassailable, and his arguments unanswerable. I should like to hear what you have to say against them. We will postpone Mr. Motley's article until we hear from you in reply to Judge Story.

MR. STEPHENS. Perhaps we had better take up Mr. Motley first. The one is a complete answer to the other, on the question directly now before us; that is, whether the States of our "Union" were ever separate Independent Sovereignties. On this point he fully agrees with Mr. Curtis. Judge Story wrote in 1833. He was a much better lawyer than a historian, as we shall see. In his preface to these Commentaries, he says: "In dismissing the work, I cannot but solicit the indulgence of the public for its omissions and deficiencies. With more copious materials it might have been made more exact as well as more satisfactory. With more leisure and more learning, it might have been wrought up more

in the spirit of political philosophy. Such as it is, it may be not wholly useless as a means of stimulating abler minds to a more thorough review of the subject," etc.*

Mr. Curtis, who went much more elaborately into the subject, wrote in 1854. Mr. Motley's article appeared in 1861. Here is that article in the Rebellion Record, volume i, page 210. In it, he, like Judge Story, attempts to show, that the whole people of the United States now constitute one Nation. He arrives at this conclusion, however, by a very different chain of reasoning. That chain, and its links, we shall, perhaps, have occasion to examine in detail hereafter. Just here, I refer only to that part bearing directly upon the question now in issue. This is what he says:

"The body politic, known for seventy years as the United States of America, is not a Confederacy, not a compact of Sovereign States, not a co-partnership; it is a Commonwealth, of which the Constitution, drawn up at Philadelphia, by the Convention of 1787, over which Washington presided, is the organic, fundamental law. We had already had enough of a Confederacy. The thirteen rebel provinces, afterwards the thirteen original independent States of America, had been united to each other during the Revolutionary War, by articles of Confederacy. 'The said States hereby enter into a firm league of friendship with each other.' Such was the language of 1781, and the league or treaty thus drawn up was ratified, not by the people of the States, but by the State Governments,-the legislative and executive bodies namely, in their corporate capacity.

"The Continental Congress, which was the central

administrative board during this epoch, was a diet of envoys from Sovereign States. It had no power to act on individuals. It could not command the States. It could move only by requisitions, and recommendations. Its functions were essentially diplomatic, like those of the States General of the old Dutch Republic, like those of the modern Germanic Confederation. We were a league of petty Sovereignties."

This is quite enough of this article just now. I quote from him no further for the present. We may have to refer to other portions of his article again on another point as we advance. Mr. Motley, in that portion which I have quoted, fully admits and distinctly asserts that the first "Union" was "a Union" of States. Of Sovereign States. So much by way of setting off one of these high authorities against the other.

Now what I have to say in reply to Judge Story's argument, is, that it would be conclusive of the question if it were sustained by the facts; but being so directly in opposition to the great unquestionable facts of our history -facts which Mr. Motley could not venture to gainsay -facts as well established as that America was discovered by Columbus, or that the colonies were subject to the British Government at the time of their Declaration of Independence-it is utterly untenable.

JUDGE BYNUM. Do you question his facts?

Mr. STEPHENS. Some of them I most certainly do. Indeed, all of them, every one of them, that has any material bearing upon the question in issue. I do not question the fact that the Colonies, under their Charter Governments, were not Sovereign, or that they never pretended to be Sovereign, or that they did not claim a local allegiance. What has that to do with the question? Nor do I dissent from the statement that the Declaration

of Independence was not made by these Charter Governments, nor that they were not competent or authorized to adopt it. No truth is better established than that but what has that to do with the question? That the Declaration of Independence was entirely revolutionary in its character is also true. All admit it. The Declaration was made with a view to overthrow these very Governments, as they were then administered, and the authority of the British Crown, under whose auspices they had been established, or by which they were then attempted to be controlled. What need had Judge Story to state this fact in the line of his argument? I do most fully agree with him also where he says that those Charters neither contemplated the case or provided for it. It was an act of "original inherent Sovereignty by the people themselves, resulting from their right to change the form of Government, and to institute a new Government, whenever necessary for their safety and happiness." This I fully agree to. But this was done by the Paramount authority of the people of each Colony respectively for themselves. The Declaration itself was made by the people of each Colony, for each Colony, through representatives acting by the Paramount authority of each Colony, separately and respectively. The Declaration of Independence was, in this way, a joint act of all the Colonies, for the benefit of each severally, as well as for the whole. The Congress that made it was a Congress of States. The deputies or delegates from no State assumed to vote for it until specially instructed and empowered so to do. Massachusetts had instructed and empowered her delegation so to act as early as January before; South Carolina in March; Georgia in April; North Carolina in April; Rhode Island in May; Virginia in May; New Hampshire in June; Connecticut in June;

New Jersey in June; Maryland in June; Pennsylvania and New York were the last. The powers and instructions from these States did not arrive until after the 1st day of July, which caused a postponement of final action of the Congress on the Declaration until the 4th day of that month, when, full powers being received from all the States, it was then, after being voted upon by States and carried by States, unanimously proclaimed by all the States, so in Congress assembled.* The Declaration of Independence was, be it remembered, voted upon and carried by States, and proclaimed by and in the name of States.

This is the true history of the matter. But the statement adopted by Judge Story, of the reported remarks of Mr. Pinckney of South Carolina, is even more extraordinary still.

This statement is, "that the separate independence and individual Sovereignty of the several States were never thought of by the enlightened band of patriots who framed this Declaration.”

That these men did look forward hopefully for a continued Union of the States, under a Compact to be formed securing the Independence and Sovereignty of each, I do not doubt; but that they did not then consider each as an Independent Sovereign power, is wholly at variance with all the attending facts. The very Declaration itself shows this conclusively without going farther into a detail of these facts. The very title shows how it was made. Here it is: "In Congress, July 4th, 1776, the · unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America." It was the Declaration of States in Congress

* Bancroft, vol. viii, pp. 449, 450, 475; Elliot's Debates, vol. i, p. 60; Curtis's His. Cons., vol. i, p. 51.

† See Appendix A.