When, then, and by what means did they or could they
become severally sovereign States? The United States having
succeeded to the British sovereignty in the Anglo-American
colonies, they came into possession of full national sovereignty,
and have alone held and exercised it ever since independence
became a fact. The States severally succeeding only to the
colonies, never held, and have never been competent to delegate
sovereign powers.
The old Articles of Confederation, it is conceded, were framed on
the assumption that the States are severally sovereign; but the
several States, at the same time, were regarded as forming one
nation, and, though divided into separate States, the people were
regarded as one people. The Legislature of New York, as early as
1782, calls for an essential change In the Articles of
Confederation, as proved to be inadequate to secure the peace,
security, and prosperity of "the nation." All the proceedings
that preceded and led to the call of the convention of 1781 were
based on the assumption that the people of the United States were
one people. The States were called united, not confederated
States, even in the very Articles of Confederation themselves,
and officially the United States were called "the Union." That
the united colonies by independence became united States, and
formed really one and only one people, was in the thought, the
belief, the instinct of the great mass of the people.
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