The Union and the States are coeval, born together, and can exist
only together. Separation is dissolution--the death of both.
The United States are a state, a single sovereign state; but this
single sovereign state consists in the union and solidarity of
States instead of individuals. The Union is in each of the
States, and each of the States is in the Union.
It is necessary to distinguish in the outset between the United
States and the government of the United States, or the so-called
Federal government, which the convention refused, contrary to its
first intention to call the national government. That government
is not a supreme national government, representing all the powers
of the United States, but a limited government, restricted by its
constitution to certain specific relations and interests. The
United States are anterior to that government, and the first
question to be settled relates to their internal and inherent
Providential constitution as one political people or sovereign
state. The written constitution, in its preamble, professes to
be ordained by "We, the people of the United States." Who are
this people? How are they constituted, or what the mode and
conditions of their political existence? Are they the people of
the States severally? No; for they call themselves the people of
the United States. Are they a national people, really existing
outside and independently of their organization into distinct and
mutually independent States? No; for they define themselves to
be the people of the United States.
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