Severally they have never exercised the full
powers of sovereign states; they have had no flag--symbol of
sovereignty--recognized by foreign powers, have made no foreign
treaties, held no foreign relations, had no commerce foreign or
interstate, coined no money, entered into no alliances or
confederacies with foreign states or with one another, and in
several respects have been more restricted in their powers in the
Union than they were as British colonies.
Colonies are initial or inchoate states, and become complete
states by declaring and winning their independence; and if the
English colonies, now the United States, had separately declared
and won their independence, they would unquestionably have become
separately independent states, each invested by the law of nature
with all the rights and powers of a sovereign nation. But they
did not do this. They declared and won their independence
jointly, and have since existed and exercised sovereignty only as
states united, or the United States, that is, states sovereign in
their union, but not in their separation. This is of itself
decisive of the whole question.
But the colonists have not only never exercised the full powers
of sovereignty save as citizens of states united, therefore as
one people, but they were, so far as a people at all, one people
even before independence.
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