Department of Social and Political 



Science. 



UNITED STATES SOVEREIGNTY— WHENCE DERIVED, 

 AND WHERE VESTED. 



BYW.F. ALLEN, A.M., 



Professor of History and Latin in the University of Wisconsin. 



The late war brought to an end the long and fierce controversy 

 as to the nature of the Federal Union. What argument had not 

 been able to decide, was decided by arms; and the United States 

 are recognized as a Nation, possessed of sovereignty. With the 

 determination of this controversy, however, another question has 

 coma into prominence, as to the origin of this sovereignty. Before 

 thr' ar it was commonly held that the act which severed the col- 

 onies from the mother country had as its effect the creation of 

 thirteen independent and sovereign States; and that it was not 

 until the formation of tlie Federal Constitution that sovereignty 

 was conferred upon the central government. This doctrine, how- 

 ever, of the original sovereignty of the States, has been thcmght to 

 afford some foundation for the doctrine of Secession. Some of the 

 most ardent advocates, therefore, of the national and sovereign 

 character of our Union, have, since the war, brought into great 

 prominence the theory that the Nation was not created by the 

 States, but the States by the Nation; that the States were never, 

 in any true sense of the term, sovereign, but that the act of inde- 

 pendence created at once a sovereign Nation. This view has been 

 most fully elaborated in a series of articles in the first volume (1865) 

 of the Nation^ hy Hon. Geo. P. Marsh, United States minister to 

 Italy; it is presented also by Professor Pomeroy in his " Introduc- 

 tion to Constitutional Law." In this Avork the authority of Ham- 



