Territories have organized as States, adopted State
constitutions, and instituted State governments under what has
been called "squatter sovereignty;" but such sovereignty has no
existence, because sovereignty is attached to the domain; and the
domain is in the United States. It is the offspring of that
false view of popular sovereignty which places it in the people
personally or generically, irrespective of the domain, which
makes sovereignty a purely personal right, not a right fixed to
the soil, and is simply a return to the barbaric constitution of
power. In all civilized nations, sovereignty is inseparable from
the state, and the state is inseparable from the domain. The
will of the people, unless they are a state, is no law, has no
force, binds nobody, and justifies no act.
The regular process of forming and admitting new States explains
admirably the mutual relation of the Union and the several
States. The people of a Territory belonging to the United States
or included in the public domain not yet erected into a State and
admitted into the Union, are subjects of the United States,
without any political rights whatever, and, though a part of the
population, are no part of the sovereign people of the United
States. They become a part of that people, with political rights
and franchises, only when they are erected into a State, and
admitted into the Union as one of the United States.
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