ne themselves to be the people of
the United States. If they had considered themselves existing as
States only, they would have said "We, the States," and if
independently of State organization, they would have said "We, the
people," do ordain, &c.

The key to the mystery is precisely in this appellation United States,
which is not the name of the country, for its distinctive name is
America, but a name expressive of its political organization. In it
there are no sovereign people without States, and no States without
union, or that are not united States. The term united is not part of a
proper name, but is simply an adjective qualifying States, and has its
full and proper sense. Hence while the sovereignty is and must be in
the States, it is in the States united, not in the States severally,
precisely as we have found the sovereignty of the people is in the
people collectively or as society, not in the people individually. The
life is in the body, not in the members, though the body could not
exist if it had no members; so the sovereignty is in the Union, not in
the States severally; but there could be no sovereign union without the
States, for there is no union where there is nothing united.

This is not a theory of the constitution, but the constitutional fact
itself. It is the simple historical fact that precedes the law and
constitutes the law-making power. The people of the United States are
one people, as has already been proved: they were one people, as far as
a people at all, prior to independence, because under the same Common
Law and subject to the same sovereign, and have been so since, for as
united States they gained their independence and took their place among
sovereign nations, and as united States they have possessed and still
possess the government. As their existence before independence in
distinct colonies did not prevent their unity, so their existence since
in distinct States does not hinder them from being one people. The
States severally simply continue the colonial organizations, and united
they hold the sovereignty that was originally in the mother country.
But if one people, they are one people existing in distinct State
organizations, as before independence they were one people existing in
distinct colonial organizations. This is the original, the unwritten,
and Providential constitution of the people of the United States.

This constitution is not conventional, for it existed bef