This point has already been made, but as it is one of the niceties of the American constitution, it may not be amiss to elaborate it at greater length.The doctrine of Mr.Jefferson, Mr.Madison, and the majority of our jurists, would see to be that the States, under God, are severally sovereign in all matters not expressly confided to the General government, and therefore that the American sovereignty is divided, and the citizen owes a double allegiance--allegiance to his State, and allegiance to the United States--as if there was a United States distinguishable from the States.Hence Mr.Seward, in an official dispatch to our minister at the court of St.James, says: "The citizen owes allegiance to the State and to the United States." And nearly all who hold allegiance is due to the Union at all, hold that it is also due to the States, only that which is due to the United States is paramount, as that under feudalism due to the overlord.But this is not the case.There is no divided sovereignty, no divided allegiance.Sovereignty is one, and vests not in the General government or in the State government, but in the United States, and allegiance is due to the United States, and to them alone.Treason can be committed only against the United States, and against a State only because against the United States, and is properly cognizable only by the Federal courts.Hence the Union men committed no treason in refusing to submit to the secession ordinances of their respective States, and in sustaining the national arms against secession.
There are two very common mistakes: the one that the States individually possess all the powers not delegated to the General government; and the other that the Union, or United States, have only delegated powers.But the United States possess all the powers of a sovereign state, and the States individually and the General government possess only such powers as the United States in convention delegate to them respectively.The sovereign is neither the General government nor the States severally, but the United States in convention.The United States are the one indivisible sovereign, and this sovereign governs alike general matters in the General government, and particular matters in the several State governments.All legal authority in either emanates from this one indivisible and plenary sovereign, and hence the law enacted by a State are really enacted by the United States, and derive from them their force and vitality as laws.
Hence, as the United States survive the particular State, the lapse of the State does not abrogate the State laws, or dissolve civil society within its jurisdiction.
This is evidently so, because civil society in the particular State does not rest on the State alone, nor on Congress, but on the United States.Hence all civil rights of every sort created by the individual State are really held from the United States, and therefore it was that the people of non-slaveholding States were, as citizens of the United States, responsible for the existence of slavery in the States that seceded.There is a solidarity of States in the Union as there is of individuals in each of the States.The political error of the Abolitionists was not in calling upon the people of the United States to abolish slavery, but in calling upon them to abolish it through the General government, which had no jurisdiction in the case; or in their sole capacity as men, on purely humanitarian grounds, which were the abrogation of all government and civil society itself, instead of calling upon them to do it as the United States in convention assembled, or by an amendment to the constitution of the United States in the way ordained by that constitution itself.This understood, the constitution and laws of a defunct State remain in force by virtue of the will of the United States, till the State is raised from the dead, restored to life and activity, and repeals or alters them, or till they are repealed or altered by the United States or the national convention.But as the defunct State could not, and the convention had not repealed or altered them, save in the one case mentioned, the General government had no alternative but to treat them and all rights created by them as the territorial law, and to respect them as such.
