This is as true of the original States as of the new
States; for it has been shown in the chapter on The United States,
that the original British sovereignty under which the colonies
were organized and existed passed, on the fact of independence,
to the States United, and not to the States severally. Hence if
nine States had ratified the constitution, and the other four had
stood out, and refused to do it, which was within their
competency, they would not have been independent sovereign
States, outside of the Union, but Territories under the Union.
Texas forms the only exception to the rule that the States have
never been independent of the Union. All the other new States
have been formed from territory subject to the Union. This is
true of all the States formed out of the Territory of the
Northwest, and out of the domain ceded by France, Spain, and
Mexico to the United States. All these cessions were held by the
United States as territory immediately subject to the Union,
before being erected into States; and by far the larger part is
so held even yet. But Texas was an independent foreign state,
and was annexed as a State without having been first subjected as
territory to the United States. It of course lost by annexation
its separate sovereignty. But this annexation was held by many
to be unconstitutional; it was made when the State sovereignty
theory had gained possession of the Government, and was annexed
as a State instead of being admitted as a State formed from
territory belonging to the United States, for the very purpose of
committing the nation to that theory.
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