Ask Chief Justice John Marshall, from Sturges v Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 122, (1819):
When the American people created a national legislature, with certain enumerated powers, it was neither necessary nor proper to define the powers retained by the States. These powers proceed, not from the people of America, but from the people of the several States; and remain, after the adoption of the constitution, what they were before, except so far as they may be abridged by that instrument.What was that Court case? McCullough v Maryland? From Marshall again:
No political dreamer [except Walt] was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass. Of consequence, when they act, they act in their States. But the measures they adopt do not, on that account, cease to be the measures of the people themselves, or become the measures of the State governments.See, I didn't even leave your line out. Something later perhaps? How about Justice Thomas, In US Term Limits v Thornton, 514 US 779, (1995):
To be sure, when the Tenth Amendment uses the phrase "the people," it does not specify whether it is referring to the people of each State or the people of the Nation as a whole. But the latter interpretation would make the Amendment pointless: there would have been no reason to provide that where the Constitution is silent about whether a particular power resides at the state level, it might or might not do so. In addition, it would make no sense to speak of powers as being reserved to the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole, because the Constitution does not contemplate that those people will either exercise power or delegate it. The Constitution simply does not recognize any mechanism for action by the undifferentiated people of the Nation.The people of the differentiated states are the sovereigns - not the people of the whole United States en masse.
There is nothing inconsistant with perpetual union here. There is nothing here that would allow unilateral state secession.
"In the case now to be determined, the defendant, a sovereign state, denies the obligation of a law enacted by the legislature of the Union...In discussing this question, the counsel for the state of Maryland deemed it of some importance, in the construction of the Constitution, to consider that instrument as not emanating from the people, but as the act of sovereign and independent states. It would be difficult to maintain this position....
--Chief Justice John Marshall, majority opinon McCullough v. Maryland 1819
"That the United States form, for many, and for most important purposes, a single nation, has not yet been denied. In war, we are one people. In making peace, we are one people. In all commercial regulations, we are one and the same people. In many other respects, the American people are one; and the government which is alone capable of controlling and managing their interests in all these respects, is the government of the Union. It is their government and in that character, they have no other. America has chosen to be, in many respects, and in many purposes, a nation; and for all these purposes, her government is complete; to all these objects it is competent. The people have declared that in the exercise of all powers given for these objects, it is supreme. It can, then, in effecting these objects, legitimately control all individuals or governments within the American territory.
The constitution and laws of a state, so far as they are repugnant to the constitution and laws of of the United States are absolutely void. These states are constituent parts of the United States; they are members of one great empiure--for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate."
--Chief Justice John Marshall, writing the majority opinion, Cohens v. Virginia 1821
"The constitution of the United States was ordained and established, not by the states in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of the constitution declares, by "the people of the United States."
-Justice Story, Martin v, Hunter's Lessee, 1816
The sovereignty of the United States rests on the people, not the States.
I know I am a brainwashed drone of the NEA. But Chief Justice Marshall and Justice Story were not.
Walt
Elenchus for 4CJ. The States were the People, and the People by sovereign acts not ordinances, seceded. Their actions were the lawful exercise of the rights that they enjoyed unimpaired by the Constitution, as noticed by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, the Supremacy Clause notwithstanding.
Well argued, sir. Congratulations. The juleps await us -- today we are on the lawn, in the shade of the mossy oak behind the pavilion, and the ladies have preceded us.
Or, George Washington...
"The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. "