It is well for the average American of the present generation, at this point, to fix firmly in his mind that this _legislative_ ratification of these _federal_ Articles was the important exercise of an existing and recognized ability of state legislatures to make all constitutional articles of a _federal_ nature, which never confer any government ability directly to interfere with human freedom. It is well for the same American also to fix firmly in his mind that it was the exercise of an ability to make constitutional articles entirely distinct from the other existing ability to make them, which had been exercised, in each nation, directly by the citizens themselves, in “conventions,” in the preceding year of 1776. In that year, there had been exercised the inherent and inalienable and always existing ability of citizens of a nation, assembled in conventions of deputies chosen for that express purpose, to make _any_ kind of constitutional article, whether it confers _federal_ or _national_ power on government. In the years 1777 to 1781, there had been exercised the recognized and existing _but limited_ ability of state legislatures to make _federal_ articles, an ability clearly then known not to include the ability to confer upon government _national_ power to interfere with individual freedom. Living with those Americans through their great days, we have now reached the day in 1781 when they were all citizens of _some_ nation but were not all citizens of the same nation. The great Republic, America, had not yet been born. The legal status of the American as an individual, and his relation to all governments was exactly the same as it had been since 1776. Each American was the citizen of some nation. His individual freedom could be directly interfered with only by some law of the legislature of that single nation under a valid grant, from him and his fellow citizens, of power to enact that law on that subject. Neither the legislature of any other nation in America, nor the legislatures of all other nations in America, nor the government of nations which those legislatures had created and endowed with _federal_ powers, the Congress of the Federation, could singly or collectively issue a single command to him, interfering in any manner with his human freedom, or could give to any government or governments a power to issue such a command.