Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

That it will be a federal and not a national act, as these terms are understood by objectors—the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation—is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union nor from that of a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States that are parties to it, differing no otherwise from their ordinary assent than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves. Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes or by considering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these has been adopted. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act.¹

It is a tedious task to have to expose the misstatements, both of fact and of principle, which have occupied so much attention, but it is rendered necessary by the extent to which they have been imposed upon the acceptance of the public, through reckless assertion and confident and incessant repetition.

“I remember,” says Mr. Webster, “to have heard Chief-Justice Marshall ask counsel, who was insisting upon the authority of an act of legislation, if he thought an act of legislation could create or destroy a fact, or change the truth of history?” “Would it alter the fact,” said he, “if a Legislature should solemnly enact that Mr. Hume never wrote the History of England?” “A Legislature may alter the law,” continues Mr. Webster, “but no power can reverse a fact. Hence, if the Convention of 1787 had expressly declared that the Constitution was [to be] ordained by “the people of the United States in the aggregate,” or by the people of America as one nation, this would not have destroyed the fact that it was ratified by each State for itself, and that each State was bound only by “its own voluntary act.”” (Bledsoe.)

But the convention, as we have seen, said no such thing. No such community as “the people of the United States in the aggregate” is known to it, or ever acted on it. It was ordained, established, and ratified by the people of the several states; no theories or assertions of a later generation can change or conceal this fixed fact, as it stands revealed in the light of contemporaneous records.