ot an independent nation;
they were only a people struggling to become an independent nation.
Prior to that preliminary treaty, neither the Union nor the States
severally were sovereign. The articles were agreed on in Congress in
1777, but they were not ratified by all the States till May, 1781, and
in 1782 the movement was commenced in the Legislature of New York for
their amendment. Till the organization under the constitution ordained
by the people of the United States in 1787, and which went into
operation in 1789, the United States had in reality only a provisional
government, and it was not till then that the national government was
definitively organized, and the line of demarcation between the General
Government and the particular State governments was fixed.

The Confederation was an acknowledged failure, and was rejected by the
American people, precisely because it was not in harmony with the
unwritten or Providential constitution of the nation; and it was not in
harmony with that constitution precisely because it recognized the
States as severally sovereign, and substituted confederation for union.
The failure of confederation and the success of union are ample proofs
of the unity of the American nation. The instinct of unity rejected
State sovereignty in 1787 as it did in 1861. The first and the last
attempt to establish State sovereignty have failed, and the failure
vindicates the fact that the sovereignty is in the States united, not
in the States severally.

CHAPTER X

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

The constitution of the United States is twofold, written and
unwritten, the constitution of the people and the constitution of the
government.

The written constitution is simply a law ordained by the nation or
people instituting and organizing the government; the unwritten
constitution is the real or actual constitution of the people as a
state or sovereign community, and constituting them such or such a
state. It is Providential, not made by the nation, but born with it.
The written constitution is made and ordained by the sovereign power,
and presupposes that power as already existing and constituted.

The unwritten or Providential constitution of the United States is
peculiar, and difficult to understand, because incapable of being fully
explained by analogies borrowed from any other state historically
known, or described by political philosophers. It belongs to the
Graeco-Roman f