Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 12.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

A few conclusive Historical facts.

But this is not, and it never was, a case of doubt or ambiguity requiring hermeneutics. The facts are so plain and decisive against these advocates, that, as is evident, they have labored to evade or suppress them. They knew that the phrase, “the people,” so far as political action of the highest nature was concerned, must have meant the people of the then existent political organizations, and not a mass or nation with unified power and modes of acting, because the same people that they would fain consider as a nation, was just then, and was always, divided into thirteen most distinct political bodies, which were acknowledged by Great Britain to be respectively sovereign, and were at the moment of final action on the Federal Constitution, described as follows: “Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence.” Hence, ‘We, the people of the United States’ meant, we, the people of the States that are united.

Now we are prepared for the historical fact well known to but not mentioned by Dane, Story and Webster, viz: that the preamble, unanimously adopted by the Federal Convention for the proposed Constitution, was as follows: “We the people of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, do Ordain, declare, and establish the following Constitution for the government of ourselves and our posterity: Article I. The style of the government ”