As the colonial people were, though distributed in distinct
colonies, still one people, the people of the United States,
though distributed into distinct and mutually independent States,
are yet one sovereign people, therefore a sovereign state or
nation, and not a simple league or confederacy of nations.
There is no doubt that all the powers exercised by the General
Government, though embracing all foreign relations and all
general interests and relations of all the States, might have
been exercised by it under the authority of a mutual compact of
the several States, and practically the difference between the
compact theory and the national view would be very little, unless
in cases like that of secession. On the supposition that the
American people are one political people, the government would
have the right to treat secession, in the sense in which the
seceders understand it, as rebellion, and to suppress it by
employing all the physical force at its command; but on the
compact theory it would have no such right. But the question now
under discussion turns simply on what has been and is the
historical fact. Before the States could enter into the compact
and delegate sovereign powers to the Union, they must have
severally possessed them. It is historically certain that they
did not possess them before independence; they did not obtain
them by independence, for they did not severally succeed to the
British sovereignty, to which they succeeded only as States
united.
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