In Virginia, which was the tenth State to come into the Union, Patrick Henry, who had declined the appointment to the general convention, objected because the Constitution said “We, the people,” instead of “We, the States”; and “if the States be not the agents of this compact, it must be one great consolidated national government of the people of all the States.”[48] “It had an awful squinting towards monarchy.” “The federal convention ought to have amended the old system.” George Mason objected because the Constitution had no bill of rights and would end in a monarchy or corrupt oppressive aristocracy, and the confederation be converted to one grand consolidated government.[49] The acceptance was ably argued and urged by Madison and others and Edmund Randolph, who had refused to sign, but had since come to the conclusion that the only chance of escape from the discredited, crumbling Confederacy was in adopting the new Constitution. He said in the beginning of the debate, “I shall endeavor to make the committee sensible of the necessity of establishing a national government. In the course of my argument I shall show the inefficacy of the confederation.”[50]
The acceptance of New York, her territory dividing the Central and Southern States from the Eastern, was considered all important. Her ratification of the Constitution came late. She was the eleventh State, and neglected to vote for President at Washington’s first election.
John Jay, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Congress of the United States, in an address to the people, plainly told them the new government was national. He said: “Friends and Fellow-Citizens—The convention concurred in opinion with the people, that a national government, competent to every national object, was indispensably necessary.”[51]
Hamilton, Jay, Chancellor and other Livingstons, Melanchthon Smith, and a number of leading citizens were members of the convention. Yates and Lansing, who were members of the general convention that made the Constitution, and Governor George Clinton strenuously and persistently opposed the ratification, alleging as the reason the danger from the great powers given to the General Government subverting those of the State.
This New York convention for a long time was opposed to the ratification. Hamilton, who was exceedingly zealous for it, wrote almost in despair to Madison, asking if a State could adopt the Constitution conditionally and afterwards withdraw from the Union if its proposed amendments were not adopted. Madison replied, that “a conditional ratification did not make a State a member of the Union. The Constitution requires an adoption in toto and forever. It has been so adopted by the other States. An adoption for a limited time would be as defective as of some articles only.” Hamilton did not question the correctness of this opinion; but New York was brought finally to giving her consent. Mr. Lansing’s two motions (which show that he thought the Union perpetual) of a conditional ratification with a bill of rights, and of a reservation of a right to withdraw from the Union after a certain number of years unless the amendments proposed should previously be submitted to a general convention, were negatived;[52] a similar conditional acceptance had been proposed in the Virginia convention and abandoned.
The proceedings in most of the conventions called by the several States are reported in Elliot’s Debates. In none of them was the theory advanced or suggested that a State had the power to secede from the government or decide as an independent sovereignty on the validity of the acts or laws of the new government. If the power to nullify was then supposed to exist, if the right of a State to leave at its will was thought of, why was it not then urged that nullification and secession were easy remedies if the Union should be or become oppressive? No one imagined that there was any such power remaining in the States. No one answered to the alleged fear of oppression and tyranny that the State could nullify or secede. Neither friend nor foe, as Webster said, claimed either.
On all occasions, in all the speeches, it was assumed as granted, that the consolidation of the States, as it was termed, was national and perpetual. Even in South Carolina the proceedings are conclusive on this point. The Constitution first came before the legislature on the question of submitting it to the people of the State. Charles Pinckney, who had also been a very prominent member of the general convention that made the Constitution, said: “He repeated that the necessity of having a government which should at once operate upon the people, and not upon the States, was conceived to be indispensable by every delegation present.”[53]
The question whether the States ever had individual sovereignty arose in the convention chosen for deciding on the ratification of the Constitution, and General Charles C. Pinckney[54] insisted that our independence came from the Declaration of Independence made by the Congress of the Confederacy, wherein in the name of the good people of these colonies we were declared free and independent States. The separate independence and individual sovereignty of the several States was never thought of, not even mentioned by name in any part of it. The same objection in South Carolina as in other States to the Constitution as destructive of liberty was made. James Lincoln, a delegate from Ninety-six, said: “From a democratic you are rushing into an aristocratic government. Liberty! what is liberty? The power of governing yourselves. If you adopt this Constitution have you this power? No; you give it into the hands of a set of men who live one thousand miles distant from you.”[55]
The words of ratification of the States are also conclusive on these points. We will take the three important States whose acceptance was for a long time doubtful. Massachusetts in her pious and reverential ratification used the word compact, which numerous Southern writers, Davis, Stephens, and others, bring up as proof that Massachusetts considered the Constitution a mere confederacy and not a government.
To refute this it is but necessary to give the very words used: