In the Shadow of Our Founders: Part Two
individuals were fully sovereign and possessed complete, natural rights in the world around them. However, for purposes of safeguarding mutual interests and personal safety, it was essential for these sovereign individuals to join together into social compacts. Doing this would, by necessity, involve the forfeiture of certain rights for the good of the community. Thus, an individual surrenders some of his rights in order to achieve the protection and benefits of civil government.
The Founders' conception of the Union, under the terms of the Articles of Confederation, was essentially John Locke applied to the states. Each state was sovereign, yet the states needed each other, and thus were joining into a "firm league of friendship," agreeing to limitations on their rights and sovereignty for the good of the whole. And the Articles did place several clear limitations on state prerogatives, including a prohibition on treaties with other nations, keeping naval vessels in port during peacetime, and engaging in war with other nations or states.
The final and most important indication of the Union's nature under the Articles is found in Section XIII: "Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State."
Clearly, the states were sovereign entities and retained that status formally. But they were also permanently bound together in a "firm league" of mutual friendship and support, with a number of conditions and restrictions placed upon both them and the central government.
By 1787, in spite of the states having delegated many of their powers and rights to the central government, the Articles of Confederation weren't strong enough to sustain the Republic of the United States. Therefore, the states sent delegates to Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the Articles. The product of the long, hot summer that ensued was an entirely new Constitution.
This new document, in its Preamble, referred to "the people of the United States" in apparently aggregate form, and did not mention the states individually, as had been done in the 1783 Treaty of Paris which officially
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