The first and most prominent of these is directed against what is
called the test oath, which an effort has been made to render
odious. So far from deserving the denunciation that has been
levelled against it, I view this provision of the ordinance as
but the natural result of the doctrines entertained by the
State, and the position which she occupies. The people of
Carolina believe that the Union is a union of States, and not of
individuals; that it was formed by the States, and that the
citizens of the several States were bound to it through the acts
of their several States; that each State ratified the
Constitution for itself, and that it was only by such
ratification of a State that any obligation was imposed upon its
citizens. Thus believing, it is the opinion of the people of
Carolina that it belongs to the State which has imposed the
obligation to declare, in the last resort, the extent of this
obligation, as far as her citizens are concerned; and this upon
the plain principles which exist in all analogous cases of
compact between sovereign bodies. On this principle the people
of the State, acting in their sovereign capacity in convention,
precisely as they did in the adoption of their own and the
Federal Constitution, have declared, by the ordinance, that the
acts of Congress which imposed duties under the authority to lay
imposts, were acts not for revenue, as intended by the
Constitution, but for protection, and therefore null and void.
The ordinance thus enacted by the people of the State themselves,
acting as a sovereign community, is as obligatory on the citizens
of the State as any portion of the Constitution. In prescribing,
then, the oath to obey the ordinance, no more was done than to
prescribe an oath to obey the Constitution. It is, in fact, but