[444]
being as fully conversant as Mr. Jefferson was with the facts relating to this subject that I have herein presented, let the record of the most important one of their own subsequent acts answer.
It is well known that some of them were engaged in framing, about two years after the date of the Declaration, the first Constitution of the United States, and that all of them approved and advocated the ratification of that Constitution by all the States.
I append the first three articles of that Constitution.
article I: The style of this Confederacy shall be the United States of America. article II. Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this Confederation [not this people] expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled. article III: The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other for the common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to or attacks made upon them, or any one of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade or any pretense whatever.Is it conceivable that the signers of the Declaration, if they entertained Judge Story's theory respecting the sovereignty of that absurd political myth, “the people of the United States,” would have so stultified themselves, have so ignored their own belief, would have been such open and villainous traitors to their supreme sovereign, this alleged one people, as to have framed, advocated and urged upon their constituents the ratification of those three articles — articles flatly contradicting in almost every line the theory which Judge Story foisted upon a deluded [Northern] people? And yet, right in the face of the facts detailed in this paper, and with which the Judge was intimately conversant, he seems to have believed, and unfortunately caused many millions of people to believe sincerely that the people of those thirteen Confederate Sovereign Nations were, at the date of the Declaration of Independence, one consolidated supreme, sovereign people, dominant over the entire country, at the very time that this alleged sovereign people possessed as one people no government whatever, nor did they pretend to have any. To this seeming belief of Judge Story's, I can only respond by quoting in part (and adding to it) the old Roman poet's famous exclamation:
Credant “Judaeus Appella,”
Americanurvue Story! “Non ego.”
