uctance, look to any other quarter for
those advantages of commercial intercourse which we conceive to
be more natural and reciprocal between them and us.

"I am, at the request and in behalf of the General Assembly,
your most obedient, humble servant."

(Signed) "John Collins, _Governor_.

"_His Excellency, the President of the United States._"

[American State Papers, _Vol. I_, Miscellaneous.]

CHAPTER IV.

The Constitution not adopted by one People "in the
Aggregate."--A Great Fallacy exposed.--Mistake of Judge
Story.--Colonial Relations.--The United Colonies of New
England.--Other Associations.--Independence of Communities
traced from Germany to Great Britain, and from Great Britain to
America.--Mr. Everett's "Provincial People."--Origin and
Continuance of the Title "United States."--No such Political
Community as the "People of the United States."

The historical retrospect of the last three chapters and the extracts
from the records of a generation now departed have been presented as
necessary to a right understanding of the nature and principles of the
compact of 1787, on which depended the questions at issue in the
secession of 1861 and the contest that ensued between the States.

We have seen that the united colonies, when they declared their
independence, formed a league or alliance with one another as "United
States." This title antedated the adoption of the Articles of
Confederation. It was assumed immediately after the Declaration of
Independence, and was continued under the Articles of Confederation; the
first of which declared that "the style of this confederacy shall be
'The United States of America'"; and this style was retained--without
question--in the formation of the present Constitution. The name was not
adopted as antithetical to, or distinctive from, "confederate," as some
seem to have imagined. If it has any significance now, it must have had
the same under the Articles of Confederation, or even before they were
adopted.

It has been fully shown that the States which thus became and continued
to be "united," whatever form their union assumed, acted and continued
to act as distinct and sovereign political communities. The monstrous
fiction that they acted as _one people "in their aggregate capacity"_
has not an atom of fact to serve as a basis.

To go back to the very beginning, the British colonies never constituted