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 United
States, of a civil government, to guard and protect and defend
them all. On the contrary, that same assembly which issued
the Declaration of Independence, instead of continuing to act in
the name and by the authority of the good people of the United
States, had, immediately after the appointment of the
committee to prepare the Declaration, appointed another