ore the people
met or could meet in convention. They have not, as an independent
sovereign people, either established their union, or distributed
themselves into distinct and mutually independent States. The union
and the distribution, the unity and the distinction, are both original
in their constitution, and they were born United States, as much and as
truly so as the son of a citizen is born a citizen, or as every one
born at all is born a member of society, the family, the tribe, or the
nation. The Union and the States were born together, are inseparable
in their constitution, have lived and grown up together; no serious
attempt till the late secession movement has been made to separate
them; and the secession movement, to all persons who knew not the real
constitution of the United States, appeared sure to succeed, and in
fact would have succeeded if, as the secessionists pretended, the Union
had been only a confederacy, and the States had been held together only
by a conventional compact, and not by a real and living bond of unity.
The popular instinct of national unity, which seemed so weak, proved to
be strong enough to defeat the secession forces, to trample out the
confederacy, and maintain the unity of the nation and the integrity of
its domain.

The people can act only as they exist, as they are, not as they are
not. Existing originally only as distributed in distinct and mutually
independent colonies, they could at first act only through their
colonial organizations, and afterward only through their State
organizations. The colonial people met in convention, in the person of
representatives chosen by colonies, and after independence in the
person of representatives chosen by States. Not existing outside of
the colonial or State organizations, they could not act outside or
independently of them. They chose their representatives or delegates
by colonies or States, and called at first their convention a Congress;
but by an instinct surer than their deliberate wisdom, they called it
not the Congress of the confederate, but of the United States,
asserting constitutional unity as well as constitutional multiplicity.
It is true, in their first attempt to organize a general government,
they called the constitution they devised Articles of Confederation,
but only because they had not attained to full consciousness of
themselves; and that they really meant union, not confederation, is
evident from their adopt