answer to petition, remonstrance, and address. ...

The dissolution of allegiance to the British crown, the severance of
the colonies from the British empire, and their actual existence as
independent States, were definitively established in fact, by war
and peace. The independence of each separate State had never been
declared of right. It never existed in fact. Upon the principles of
the Declaration of Independence, the dissolution of the ties of
allegiance, the assumption of sovereign power, and the institution
of civil government, are all acts of transcendent authority, which
the people alone are competent to perform; and, accordingly, it is
in the name and by the authority of the people, that two of these
acts--the dissolution of allegiance, with the severance from the
British empire, and the declaration of the United Colonies, as free
and independent States, were performed by that instrument.

But there still remained the last and crowning act, which the people
of the Union alone were competent to perform--the institution of
civil government, for that compound nation, the United States of
America.

At this day it cannot but strike us as extraordinary, that it does
not appear to have occurred to any one member of that assembly,
which had laid down in terms so clear, so explicit, so unequivocal,
the foundation of all just government, in the imprescriptible rights
of man, and the transcendent sovereignty of the people, and who in
those principles had set forth their only personal vindication from
the charges of rebellion against their king, and of treason to their
country, that their last crowning act was still to be performed upon
the same principles. That is, the institution, by the people of the