the support of Human Rights. It was done “in the name and by authority of the good people of these Colonies,” called at the beginning “one people,” and it was entitled “Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,” without a word of separate sovereignty. As a National act it has two distinct features: first, a severance of the relations between the “United Colonies” and the mother country; and, secondly, a declaration of self-evident truths on which the severance was justified and the new Nation founded. It is the “United Colonies” that are declared free and independent States; and this act is justified by the sublime declaration that all men are created equal, with certain inalienable rights, and that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Here was that “American Commonwealth,” the image of National Unity, dedicated to Human Rights, which had enchanted the vision of the early patriot seeking new safeguards for Liberty. Here was a new Nation, with new promises and covenants, never before made. The constituent authority was “the People.” The rights it promised and covenanted were the Equal Rights of All; not the rights of Englishmen, but the rights of Man. On this account our Declaration has its great meaning in history; on this account our nation became at once a source of light to the world. Well might the sun have stood still on that day to witness a kindred luminary ascending into the sky!

In this sudden transformation where was the sovereignty? It was declared that the United Colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent States. It was never declared that the separate Colonies were so of right. Plainly they never were so in fact. Therefore there was no separate sovereignty either of right or in fact. The sovereignty anterior to Independence was in the mother country; afterwards it was in the people of the United States, who took the place of the mother country. As the original sovereignty was undivided, so also was that sovereignty of the people which became its substitute. If authority were needed for this irresistible conclusion, I might find it in the work of the great commentator, Mr. Justice Story, and in that powerful discourse of John Quincy Adams entitled “The Jubilee of the Constitution,” in both of which the sovereignty is accorded to the People, and not to the States. Nor should I forget that rarest political genius, Alexander Hamilton, who, regarding these things as a contemporary, declared most triumphantly that “the Union had complete sovereignty”; that “the Declaration of Independence was the fundamental constitution of every State”; and, finally, that “the union and independence of these States are blended and incorporated in one and the same act.”[20] Such was the great beginning of national life.

A beautiful meditative poet, whose words are often most instructive, confesses that we may reach heights we cannot hold:—