[64] powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.The resolution of adoption by the New York convention is of very much the same import. These two States also proposed amendments to the Constitution, which were quickly ratified and made a part of the instrument itself. The amendment bearing specifically upon the point under consideration, was the 10th, which expressly provides ‘That the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’ Thus, with the very adoption of the Constitution, the position maintained by the statesmen that the Constitution was a compact between States, was established, as they thought, beyond a question.
If it was a compact between separate sovereignties, and the compact enumerated all the powers surrendered to the federal head, then the parties to the compact could withdraw as an incident to their sovereignity, and because that right had not been surrendered. The citizen, as we know, was the citizen of the State, and not of the Union. If the State had a right to secede, it had the supreme claim upon the allegiance of all its citizens, even in a controversy between the State and the federal head.
