Since
the abortion/infanticide debate has begun to rage more intensely lately, the
question is being asked by various and sundry, ‘What kind of nation do we want
America to be?’
A
better question would be, ‘Is America a nation at all?’
In
the States, there have generally been two views on this question. The first is that the entity referred to as
‘America’ is not a unified nation-state but a voluntary confederation of
independent States, each of which may leave the union at any time and resume
its life as a separate nation, unhindered by any of her sister States. The second is that America is ‘one nation,
indivisible’ and that the States are ultimately subservient to whatever decrees
come out of Washington City.
The
way one answers the second question will determine how one answers the first;
the conception one has of the States and the union will shape the policies one
desires to implement at the ‘national’ level.
What
is the answer to the second question, then?
Is America an indivisible nation or a voluntary confederation? The reigning idea is that America is one
nation, and the States, cities, counties, etc. all owe their existence and
allegiance to the Great Union, whose collective life is centered in Washington
City. This idea has been promoted by
influential men through the years: John
Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, Joseph Story, Daniel Webster, Abraham
Lincoln, etc.
But
it is undoubtedly false. One of
Virginia’s leading men prior to the War, Abel Upshur (1790-1844), gives ample
testimony to this in reply to Joseph Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. On the idea of there being one homogenous
American people, he writes,
In
order to constitute "one people," in a political sense, of the
inhabitants of different countries, something more is necessary than that they
should owe a common allegiance to a common sovereign. Neither is it sufficient
that, in some particulars, they are bound alike, by laws which that sovereign
may prescribe; nor does the question depend on geographical relations. The
inhabitants of different islands may be one people, and those of contiguous
countries may be, as we know they in fact are, different nations. By the term
"people," as here used, we do not mean merely a number of persons. We
mean by it a political corporation, the members of which owe a common
allegiance to a common sovereignty, and do not owe any allegiance which is not
common; who are bound by no laws except such as that sovereignty may prescribe;
who owe to one another reciprocal obligations; who possess common political
interests; who are liable to [ *15 ]*common political duties; and who can
exert no sovereign power except in the name of the whole. Anything short of
this, would be an imperfect definition of that political corporation which we
call a "people."
Tested
by this definition, the people of the American colonies were, in no conceivable
sense, "one people." They owed, indeed, allegiance to the British
king, as the head of each colonial government, and as forming a part thereof;
but this allegiance was exclusive, in each colony, to its own government, and,
consequently, to the king as the head thereof, and was not a common allegiance
of the people of all the colonies, to a common head.[1] These colonial governments were clothed with the sovereign
power of making laws, and of enforcing obedience to them, from their own
people. The people of one colony owed no allegiance to the government of any
other colony, and were not bound by its laws. The colonies had no common
legislature, no common treasury, no common military power, no common judicatory.
The people of one colony were not liable to pay taxes to any other colony, nor
to bear arms in its defence; they had no right to vote in its elections; no
influence nor control in its municipal government, no interest in its municipal
institutions. There was no prescribed form by which the colonies could act
together, for any purpose whatever; they were not known as "one
people" in any one function of government. Although they were all, alike,
dependencies of the British crown, yet, even in the action of the parent
country, in regard to them, they were recognized as separate and distinct. They
were established at different times, and each under an authority from the
crown, which applied to itself alone. They were not even alike in their
organization. Some were provincial, some proprietary, and some charter
governments. Each derived its form of government from the particular instrument
establishing it, or from assumptions of power acquiesced in by the crown,
without any connexion with, or relation to, any other. They stood upon the same
footing, in every respect, with other British colonies, with nothing to
distinguish their relation either to the parent country or to one another. The
charter of any one of them might have been destroyed, without in any manner
affecting the rest. In point of fact, the charters of nearly all of them were
altered, from time to time, and the whole character [ *16 ]*of
their government changed. These changes were made in each colony for itself
alone, sometimes by its own action, sometimes by the power and authority of the
crown; but never by the joint agency of any other colony, and never with
reference to the wishes or demands of any other colony. Thus they were separate
and distinct in their creation; separate and distinct in the changes and
modifications of their governments, which were made from time to time; separate
and distinct in political functions, in political rights, and in political
duties.
The
provincial government of Virginia was the first established. The people of
Virginia owed allegiance to the British king, as the head of their own local
government. The authority of that government was confined within certain
geographical limits, known as Virginia, and all who lived within those limits
were "one people." When the colony of Plymouth was subsequently settled, were the people
of that colony "one" with the people of Virginia? When, long
afterwards, the proprietary government of Pennsylvania was established, were the followers of William Penn "one" with the people of
Plymouth and Virginia? If so, to which government was their allegiance due?
Virginia had a government of her own, Pennsylvania a government of her own, and
Massachusetts a government of her own. The people of Pennsylvania could not be
equally bound by the laws of all three governments, because those laws might
happen to conflict; they could not owe the duties of citizenship to all of them
alike, because they might stand in hostile relations to one another.
Either, then, the government of Virginia, which originally extended over the
whole territory, continued to be supreme therein, (subject only to its
dependence on the British crown,) or else its supremacy was yielded to the new
government. Every one knows that this last was the case; that within the
territory of the new government the authority of that government alone
prevailed. How then could the people of this new government of Pennsylvania be
said to be "one" with the people of Virginia, when they were not
citizens of Virginia, owed her no allegiance and no duty, and when their
allegiance to another government might place them in the relation of enemies of
Virginia?
In
farther illustration of this point, let us suppose that some one of the
colonies had refused to unite in the declaration of independence; what relation would it then have held to the others? Not
having disclaimed its allegiance to the British crown, it would still have
continued to be a British colony, subject to the authority of the parent [ *17 ]*country,
in all respects as before. Could the other colonies have rightfully compelled
it to unite with them in their revolutionary purposes, on the ground that it
was part and parcel of the "one people," known as the people of the
colonies? No such right was ever claimed, or dreamed of, and it will scarcely
be contended for now, in the face of the known history of the time. Such recusant colony would have stood precisely as did the Canadas, and
every other part of the British empire. The colonies, which had declared war,
would have considered its people as enemies, but would not have had a right to
treat them as traitors, or as disobedient citizens resisting their authority.
To what purpose, then, were the people of the colonies "one people,"
if, in a case so important to the common welfare, there was no right in all the
people together, to coerce the members of their own community to the
performance of a common duty?
It
is thus apparent that the people of the colonies were not "one
people," as to any purpose involving allegiance on the one hand, or
protection on the other. What, then, I again ask, are the "many
purposes" to which the author alludes? It is certainly incumbent on him
who asserts this identity, against the inferences most naturally deducible from
the historical facts, to show at what time, by what process, and for what
purposes, it was effected. He claims too much consideration for his personal
authority, when he requires his readers to reject the plain information of
history, in favor of his bare assertion. The charters of the colonies prove no
identity between them, but the reverse; and it has already been shown that this
identity is not the necessary result of their common relation to the mother
country. By what other means they came to be "one," in any
intelligible and political sense, it remains for the author to explain.
--A Brief Enquiry into the Nature and Character of our Federal Government,
ch. II, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Brief_Enquiry_into_the_Nature_and_Character_of_our_Federal_Government/II
It
being the case, therefore, that there is no single American people and thus no
single American nation either, it begs another question: Is the current federal constitution a fitting
instrument with which to govern a pluri-national confederation of States? And again we must answer in the negative.
The
current constitution of union, written in 1787, is a chimera, incorporating
both the one people, one nation doctrine and the independent States
doctrine. It was thus doomed from the
outset to be unstable and to cause antagonism amongst the parties governed by
its institutions.
But
we ought to speak more plainly on this point.
The 1787 charter was not a blundering attempt at a middle way. It was in fact a counter-revolution waged
against the decentralized government of the Articles of Confederation that was
set up among the States in 1781 as an attempt at union after declaring their
independence from the British Empire:
. . .
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England,
South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð,
unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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