ates, has been
chosen for use here, doubtless, not without a well-considered purpose.

The natural converse of _accession_ is _secession_; and, therefore, when
it is stated that the people of the States acceded to the Union, it may
be more plausibly argued that they may secede from it. If, in adopting
the Constitution, nothing was done but acceding to a compact, nothing
would seem necessary, in order to break it up, but to secede from the
same compact. But the term is wholly out of place. _Accession_, as a
word applied to political associations, implies coming into a league,
treaty, or confederacy, by one hitherto a stranger to it; and
_secession_ implies departing from such league or confederacy. The
people of the United States have used no such form of expression in
establishing the present government. They do not say that they _accede_
to a league, but they declare that they _ordain_ and _establish_ a
Constitution, Such are the very words of the instrument itself; and in
all the States, without an exception, the language used by their
conventions was, that they "_ratified the Constitution_"; some of them
employing the additional words "assented to" and "adopted," but all of
them "ratifying."

There is more importance than may, at first sight, appear, in the
introduction of this new word, by the honorable mover of these
resolutions. Its adoption and use are indispensable to maintain those
premises from which his main conclusion is to be afterwards drawn. But
before showing that, allow me to remark, that this phraseology tends to
keep out of sight the just view of a previous political history, as well
as to suggest wrong ideas as to what was actually done when the present
Constitution was agreed to. In 1789, and before this Constitution was
adopted, the United States had already been in a union, more or less
close, for fifteen years. At least as far back as the meeting of the
first Congress, in 1774, they had been in some measure, and for some
national purposes, united together. Before the Confederation of 1781,
they had declared independence jointly, and had carried on the war
jointly, both by sea and land; and this not as separate States, but as
one people. When, therefore, they formed that Confederation, and adopted
its articles as articles of perpetual union, they did not come together
for the first time; and therefore they did not speak of the States as
_acceding_ to the Confederation, although it was a league, a