Madison has been called the Father of the Constitution. Next to him, Alexander Hamilton bore the most conspicuous part in procuring it to be adopted by the people. Hamilton, as is well known, did not believe much in republics; and least of all did he believe in federal republics. His great object was to establish a consolidated republic, if we must have a republic at all. He labored zealously for this purpose, but failed. The States, without an exception, were in favor of the federal form; and no one knew better than Hamilton the kind of government which had been established.
Now let us hear what Hamilton, an unwilling, but an honest witness, says on this subject. Of the eighty-five articles in the “Federalist,” Hamilton wrote no less than fifty. Having failed to procure the establishment of a consolidated government, his next great object was, to procure the adoption by the States of the present Constitution, and to this task, accordingly, he now addressed his great intellect and powerful energies. In turning over the pages of the “Federalist,” we can scarcely go amiss in quoting Hamilton, to the point that the Constitution is a compact between the States, and not an emanation from the people of the United States in the aggregate. Let us take up the final article, for instance, the 85th. In this article we find the following expressions: “The compacts which are to embrace thirteen distinct States in a common bond of amity and Union, must necessarily be compromises of as many dissimilar interests and inclinations.” Again: “The moment an alteration is made in the present plan, it becomes, to the purpose of adoption, a new one, and must undergo a new decision of each State. To its complete establishment throughout the Union, it will, therefore, require the concurrence of thirteen States.”
And again: “Every Constitution for the United States must, inevitably, consist of a great variety of particulars, in which thirteen Independent States are to be accommodated in their interests, or opinions of interests. * * * Hence the necessity of moulding and arranging all the particulars which are to compose the whole in such a manner as to satisfy all the parties to the compact.” Thus, we do not hear Hamilton, any more than Madison, talking of a “people of the United States in the aggregate” as having anything to do with the formation of the new charter of government. He speaks only of States, and of compacts made or to be made by States.
In view of the great importance of the question, whether it was the people of the United States in the aggregate who “ordained and established” the Constitution, or the States,—for this, indeed, is the whole gist of the controversy between the North and South,—I have dwelt somewhat at length on the subject, and had recourse to contemporaneous history; but this was scarcely necessary. The Constitution itself settles the whole controversy. The 7th article of that instrument reads as follows: “The ratification of the Conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment of the Constitution between the States so ratifying the same.” How is it possible to reconcile this short, explicit, and unambiguous provision with the theory I am combating? The Preamble, as explained by the Northern consolidationists, and this article, cannot possibly stand together. It is not possible that the people of the United States in the aggregate, as one nation, “ordained and established” the Constitution, and that the States ordained and established it at the same time; for there was but one set of Conventions called, and these Conventions were called by the States, and acted in the names of the States.
Mr. Madison did, indeed, endeavor to have the ratification made in both modes, but his motion in the Convention to this effect failed, as we have seen. Further, how could the Constitution be binding only between the States that ratified it, if it was not ratified—that is, not “ordained and established”—by them at all, but by the people of the United States in the aggregate? As remarked by Mr. Madison, in the Virginia Convention, a ratification by the people, in the sense in which this term is used by the Northern consolidationists, would have bound all the people, and there would have been no option left the dissenting States. But the 7th article says that they shall have an option, and that the instrument is to be binding only between such of them as ratify it.
With all due deference, then, to others who have written upon this vexed question, and who have differed from me in opinion, I must insist that the proof is conclusive that the Constitution is a compact between the States; and this being so, we have the admission of both Mr. Webster and Justice Story that any one of the States may withdraw from it at pleasure.
CHAPTER III.
FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DOWN TO 1830, BOTH THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH HELD THE CONSTITUTION TO BE A COMPACT BETWEEN THE STATES.