Meaning of “We the People”
Thomas Allen
[Note: This article is a more in-depth discussion of “We the People” in the preamble of the US Constitution as presented in “Some Thoughts Related to the US Constitution” by Thomas Allen.]
According to Abraham Lincoln, Justice Joseph Story, and Daniel Webster and through them most Northerners, this phrase means that “‘the whole people of the United States in the aggregate’” (p. 51) ratified the Constitution. According to John Taylor of Caroline, Judge Abel Upshur, and John Calhoun and through them most Southerners, this phrase means that the people of each State through a representative convention in their State ratified the Constitution. Thus, each State acting as an independent sovereign ratified the Constitution.
The Southern explanation is correct. Supporting the Southern explanation is the historical record. During the drafting of the Constitution, the preamble listed each State by name. Throughout the debate, the list of States remained in the draft preamble.
After the Constitution had been drafted, it was submitted to the committee on style. This committee substituted “We the People of the United States” for the list of the States. It made the change because no one knew how many States would ratify the Constitution.
Since the Convention approved the draft Constitution as revised by the committee on style without debate, no one conceived this revision replaced the sovereign States with one consolidated sovereign federal government.
Bledsoe remarks, “The Constitution neither declares that it was established by the people of the United States in the aggregate, nor by the people of the United States in the segregate” (p. 54). However, the history of its ratification shows that the people of each State, acting independently of the other States, ratified the Constitution. No State was bound to the Constitution without its own individual consent and ratification.
Early in the Convention, Gouverneur Morris, a proponent of a strong national government, proposed that the Constitution be ratified by the people of the United States in the aggregate as one nation. His proposal would “have made it a government emanating from the people of America in one General Convention assembled, and not from the States” (p. 55). Not only was his proposal rejected, but it did not even find a second. Consequently, the Convention rejected what became the Northern explanation of the Constitution and accepted what became the Southern explanation.
As a member of the committee on style, Morris replaced the list of States in the preamble with “We the People of the United States.” Did he trick all the members of the Convention into adopting his plan to replace thirteen bodies politic with one body politic? Later, he confused that as a member of the committee on style, he made changes in the Constitution to advance his agenda. However, he never confessed to replacing the list of States with “We the People of the United States” to advance his agenda of creating one sovereign body politic. Thus, he did not understand his own words as Story and Webster would later interpret them. With his change in wording, Morris did not intend to change the Constitution from a compact among States to one established by the people of America in the aggregate. About the Constitution, Morris said, “The Constitution was a compact, not between individuals, but between political societies, the people, not of America, but of the United States, each enjoying sovereign power and of course equal rights” (p. 57). Accordingly, Morris’ explanation of the Constitution supports the Southern explanation and not the Northern explanation.
More proof that the Southern explanation of the Constitution is correct and the Northern explanation is wrong is the method of ratification. “[T]he authors of the Constitution designed it to be ratified, as in fact[,] it was, by ‘the people of the United States,’ not as individuals, but as ‘political societies, each enjoying sovereign power, and of course equal rights.’ Or, in other words, without seeing that ‘the Constitution was a compact,’ not between individuals, ‘but between political societies,’ between sovereign States” (p. 57).
With the philosophy of “might makes right,” Lincoln and the Radical Republicans subverted the Constitution and changed it from a compact of sovereign States to a highly elastic constitution of the American people in the aggregate. In other words, it became a constitution for an empire. They did this mostly through the unlawful and illegally ratified fourteenth amendment (subordinated the States and even the Constitution to the federal government by overriding the ninth and tenth amendments and Section 4 of Article 4 [v.i.]), and the sixteenth amendment (income taxes) and seventeenth amendment (direct election of senators). The Radical Republicans pushed through the fourteenth amendment, and their descendants, the Progressives, pushed through the sixteenth and seventeenth amendments. Consequently, today, the Northern explanation of “We the People of the United States” prevails, and the Southern explanation is lost in the memory hole of history. Thus, liberty dies.
Also, another important change resulting from the destruction of the original Constitution has been changing it from the Constitution for the United States as stated in the preamble to the Constitution of the United States as it is commonly called today. The phrase “Constitution for the United States” supports the Southern explanation of the Constitution while the phrase “Constitution of the United States” supports the Northern explanation.
Another important change has been referring to the United States in the singular (the United States is) instead of referring to them in the plural (the United States are). Before the Lincoln administration and the Radical Republicans, the United States were referred to in the plural as they are in Section 3 of Article III of the Constitution. Using the plural means that the United States are a union of several sovereign bodies politic. With the singular, the meaning is one consolidated body politic.
Moreover, when Lincoln and the Radical Republicans destroyed the sovereignty of the States, they subverted Section 4, Article IV of the Constitution. This Section reads, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.” That is, the federal government is supposed to guarantee each State its sovereignty by guaranteeing each of them a republic form of government. Instead, the government that Lincoln and the Radical Republicans controlled destroyed the sovereignty of the States. (A sovereign body politic is necessary for a republican form of government.)
Worst of all, Lincoln, the Republicans, and the Progressives changed the Constitution from limiting the power of the federal government to limiting the powers of the States. Now, the federal government has unlimited powers while the States have only the powers that the federal government allows them. Originally, the States had unlimited powers, except those they denied themselves in Article 1, Section 10, while the federal government had only those powers that the Constitution expressly granted.
Lincoln's War changed the Constitution. States were sovereign before Lincoln’s War to destroy the Constitution. After Lincoln’s War, the federal government usurped the sovereignty of the States — especially with the fourteenth, sixteenth, and seventh amendments. Before Lincoln’s war, the United States were a union of sovereign States, and the Constitution was a compact between those States. After Lincoln’s War, the United States became a nation, and the Constitution became an agreement of the people as a whole. The skeleton of the original Constitution remained the same, but Lincoln and the Radical Republicans and later the Progressives change the muscle and skin by usurping the sovereignty of the States. They change the political structure of the country from one where all powers not expressly delegated to the federal government or denied the States belonged to the States to one were all power belongs to the federal government and the States have only those powers that the federal government allows them.
Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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