' The States are not
named in it; nearly all the characteristic powers of sovereignty are
expressly granted to the General Government and expressly prohibited to
the States."[49] Mr. Everett afterward repeats the assertion that "the
States are not named in it."[50]
But a yet more extraordinary statement of the "one people" theory is
found in a letter addressed to the London "Times," in the same year,
1861, on the "Causes of the Civil War," by Mr. John Lothrop Motley,
afterward Minister to the Court of St. James. In this letter Mr. Motley
says of the Constitution of the United States:
"It was not a compact. Who ever heard of a compact to which
there were no parties? or who ever heard of a compact made by a
single party with himself? Yet the name of no State is mentioned
in the whole document; the States themselves are only mentioned
to receive commands or prohibitions; and the 'people of the
United States' is the single party by whom alone the instrument
is executed.
"The Constitution was not drawn up by the States, it was not
promulgated in the name of the States, it was not ratified by
the States. The States never acceded to it, and possess no power
to secede from it. It was 'ordained and established' over the
States by a power superior to the States; by the people of the
whole land in their aggregate capacity," etc.
It would be very hard to condense a more amazing amount of audacious and
reckless falsehood in the same space.
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