The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

by John Clark Ridpath

“Let me summarize them: First, there are no national elections; second, the United States has no voters; third, the States have the exclusive right to control all elections of members of Congress; fourth, the senators and representatives in Congress are State officers, or, as they have been called during the present session, ‘embassadors’ or ‘agents’ of the State; fifth, the United States has no authority to keep the peace anywhere within a State, and, in fact, has no peace to keep; sixth, the United States is not a Nation endowed with sovereign power, but is a confederacy of States; seventh, the States are sovereignties possessing inherent supreme powers; they are older than the Union, and as independent sovereignties the state governments created the Union and determined and limited the powers of the General Government.

“These declarations embody the sum total of the constitutional doctrines which the Democracy has avowed during this extra session of Congress. They form a body of doctrines which I do not hesitate to say are more extreme than was ever before held on this subject, except, perhaps, at the very crisis of secession and rebellion.

“Firmly believing that these doctrines and attempted practice of the present Congress are erroneous and pernicious, I will state briefly the counter-propositions:

“I affirm: first, that the Constitution of the United States was not created by the governments of the States, but was ordained and established by the only sovereign in this country—the common superior of both the States and the Nation—the people themselves; second, that the United States is a Nation, having a government whose powers, as defined and limited by the Constitution, operate upon all the States in their corporate capacity and upon all the people; third, that by its legislative, executive, and judicial authority the Nation is armed with adequate power to enforce all the provisions of the Constitution against all opposition of individuals or of States, at all times and all places within the Union.

“These are broad propositions; and I take the few minutes remaining to defend them. The constitutional history of this country, or, rather, the history of sovereignty and government in this country, is comprised in four sharply defined epochs:

“First. Prior to the 4th day of July, 1776, sovereignty, so far as it can be affirmed of this country, was lodged in the crown of Great Britain. Every member of every colony (the colonists were not citizens, but subjects) drew his legal rights from the crown of Great Britain. ‘Every acre of land in this country was then held mediately or immediately by grants from that crown,’ and ‘all the civil authority then existing or exercised here flowed from the head of the British empire.’

“Second. On the 4th day of July, 1776, the people of these colonies, asserting their natural inherent right as sovereigns, withdrew the sovereignty from the crown of Great Britain, and reserved it to themselves. In so far as they delegated this national authority at all, they delegated it to the Continental Congress assembled at Philadelphia. That Congress, by general consent, became the supreme government of this country—executive, judicial, and legislative in one. During the whole of its existence it wielded the supreme power of the new Nation.

“Third. On the 1st day of March, 1781, the same sovereign power, the people, withdrew the authority from the Continental Congress, and lodged it, so far as they lodged it at all, with the Confederation, which, though a league of States, was declared to be a perpetual union.

“Fourth. When at last our fathers found the Confederation too weak and inefficient for the purposes of a great nation, they abolished it, and lodged the national authority, enlarged and strengthened by new powers, in the Constitution of the United States, where, in spite of all assaults, it still remains. All these great acts were done by the only sovereign in this Republic, the people themselves.

“That no one may charge that I pervert history to sustain my own theories, I call attention to the fact that not one of the colonies declared itself free and independent. Neither Virginia nor Massachusetts threw off its allegiance to the British crown as a colony. The great declaration was made not even by all the colonies as colonies, but it was made in the name and by authority of ‘all the good people of the colonies’ as one people.