If the Preamble of the Constitution stood alone, without the lights of contemporaneous history to reveal its true character, there might be some force in Mr. Webster's position; but, unfortunately for him and his followers, he has misstated a fact It is not true, as every reader of constitutional history must know, that the Constitution of the United States was ordained by the people of the United States in the aggregate; nor did the Preamble to the Constitution mean to assert that it was true. The great names of Webster, and Story have been lent to a palpable falsification of history, and as a result of that falsification, a great war has ensued, which has sacrificed its hecatomb of victims, and desolated, and nearly destroyed an entire people. The poet did not say, without reason, that ‘words are things.’ Now let us strip off the disguises worn by these wordmongers, and see where the truth really lies. Probably some of my readers will learn, for the first time, the reasons which induced the framers of the Constitution to adopt the phraseology, ‘We, the people,’ &c., in the formation of their Preamble to that instrument. In the original draft of the Constitution, the States, by name, were mentioned, as had been done in the Articles of Confederation. The States had formed the old Confederation, the States were equally forming the new Confederation; hence the Convention naturally followed in their Preamble the form which had been set them in the old Constitution, or Articles. This Preamble, purporting that the work of forming the new government was being done by the States. remained at the head of the instrument during all the deliberations of the Convention, and no one member ever objected to it. It expressed a fact which no one thought of denying. It is thus a fact beyond question, not only that the Constitution
