128 wisco]srsi]sr acabemt sciences, arts, and letters. 



points of view, A State is, in public law, a Nation, regarded from 

 the point of view of its organization; a Nation is a State, regarded 

 from the point of view of its individuality. We must not, there- 

 fore, suppose that when the colonies, in 1876, declared themselves 

 to be free and independent States, they attributed to the word State 

 the same inferiority which we now associate with the word. They 

 understood by it, a sovereign political organization. That they 

 selected this term, rather than Nation, is no doubt partly due to 

 its expressing more distinctly the idea of organization; partly, I 

 am ready to admit, to the feeling that Nation was a larger term, 

 and that a higher organization, which should embrace all these 

 individuals in one whole, was destined to result. Nay, we meet the 

 terra Nation very early, as applied to the united body. 



That the Congress considered itself as acting as the organ of the 

 colonies or States, and not of the people at large, appears mani- 

 fest from the language habitually used. On the tenth of May, 

 1776 Congress resolved to "recommend" to the "respective assemblies 

 and conventions of the United Colonies," to form permanent gov- 

 ernments. August 21, of the same year, it made use of the ex- 

 pression: "All persons not members of, nor owing allegiance to 

 any of the United States of America," — showing that allegiance 

 was regarded as due to the several States. Its constant title for 

 itself was "the United States in Congress assembled" — a term 

 which plainly recognizes that the United States, as an organized 

 body, has no existence except in the Congress, which Congress, as 

 we have seen, acted purely as the organ of the several States. 



I pass now to the nature and effect of the act of severance. 

 This act was in the first place purely negative in its intrinsic 

 character. It simply put an end to a certain previously existing 

 relation — that by which the colonies individually depended upon 

 the British sovereignty. The relations of the several colonies to 

 one another could not be affected by it. If before the act they 

 formed a united, organized body, this united body, in virtue of the 

 act of independence, succeeded to the sovereignty surrendered by 

 the mother country; if they were individual and disconnected be- 

 fore, they remained so after the act, and each individual passed into 

 the full enjoyment of sovereignty. 



Now I have shown first, that before the revolution the colonies 

 had no organic connection with one another, but only with the 



