[Footnote 31: Constitution, Article V.]
[Footnote 32: See Elliott's "Debates," vol. v, p. 214. This reference is
taken from "The Republic of Republics," Part III, chapter vii, p. 217.
This learned, exhaustive, and admirable work, which contains a wealth of
historical and political learning, will be freely used, by kind consent
of the author, without the obligation of a repetition of special
acknowledgment in every case. A like liberty will be taken with the late
Dr. Bledsoe's masterly treatise on the right of secession, published in
1866, under the title, "Is Davis a Traitor? or, Was Secession a
Constitutional Right?"]
[Footnote 33: No. xliii.]
[Footnote 34: See "Republic of Republics," Part II, chapters xiii and
xiv.]
CHAPTER III.
Ratification of the Constitution by the States.--Organization of
the New Government.--Accession of North Carolina and Rhode
Island.--Correspondence between General Washington and the
Governor of Rhode Island.
The amended system of union, or confederation (the terms are employed
indiscriminately and interchangeably by the statesmen of that period),
devised by the Convention of 1787, and embodied, as we have seen, in the
Constitution which they framed and have set forth, was now to be
considered and acted on by the people of the several States. This they
did in the highest and most majestic form in which the sanction of
organized communities could be given or withheld--not through
ambassadors, or Legislatures, or deputies with limited powers, but
through conventions of delegates chosen expressly for the purpose and
clothed with the plenary authority of sovereign people.
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