Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 9.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[441] disproving the alleged consolidated character of the people of the United States, and showing that the people of any one State was, when ratifying the Constitution, a distinct sovereignty itself, and not a mere fraction of one sovereign people, I now cite a portion of the 2d section of the act of September 16th, 1789, underscoring the words to which I wish the reader's attention to be particularly directed. That section enacts, “That all the privileges and advantages to which ships and vessels, owned by citizens of the United States, are by law entitled, shall be, until the 15th day of January next, extended to ships and vessels wholly owned by citizens of the States of North Carolina and Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”

The citizens of the United States on the one hand, and the citizens of Spain on the other, could not in a legislative act of Congress be placed in stronger antithesis (and here it is political antithesis) than the citizens of the United States as one party, and the citizens of North Carolina and Rhode Island as another party, are placed in this act. This section shows also that if it had not been enacted, the provisions of the Tonnage Act of July 20th, which had commenced to take effect on the ships of North Carolina and Rhode Island on the 15th of August, would have continued operating on them after the 16th September, thus showing that although the ships of North Carolina and Rhode Island are not mentioned as such in the act of 20th July, (neither are the ships of other foreign countries mentioned by the names of their countries,) yet they were intended to be embraced by the general expressions in the act, to which the reader is referred.

Pray observe that the concluding clause of the 40th section of the .act of 31st July, although not mentioning either North Carolina or Rhode Island by name, (nor does it mention the then Spanish Colonies, Florida and Louisiana, adjoining the United States,) totally prohibits commerce by land between those two States and the United States, as well as the Colonies mentioned, in goods not the growth or manufacture ,of the two States, and it confiscates the goods and “the carriages, horses and oxen that shall be employed in conveying the same.”

What stronger evidence than this would you desire to show that North Carolina and Rhode Island were at that time regarded by Congress, and acknowledged as countries wholly foreign to the United States? I omitted mentioning, in its more appropriate place above, the additional strong evidence that the 40th section of the act of July 31st, exhibits when it prohibits vessels of North Carolina or Rhode Island, of a capacity less than thirty tons, from bringing into the United States goods not of their own growth or manufacture.