The Constitution of the United States was ordained and established, not by the states in their sovereign capacities [the respective peoples or citizens of each State] but emphatically, as the preamble of the Constitution declares, by “the people of the United States” [namely the one people of America].... It was competent to the people to invest the general government with all the powers which _they_ might deem proper and necessary; to extend or restrain these powers according to their own good pleasure, and to give them a paramount and supreme authority.... The people had a right to prohibit to the states the exercise of any powers which were, in _their_ judgment, incompatible with the objects of the general compact [between the citizens or members of the new nation], to make the powers of the state governments, in given cases, subordinate to those of the nation, or to reserve to _themselves_ those sovereign authorities which _they_ might not choose to delegate to either. (Supreme Court, Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 1 _Wheat._ 304, at p. 324.) Instructed by experience, the _American people_, in the conventions of their respective states, adopted the present Constitution.... The _people_ made the Constitution and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of _their_ will, and lives only by _their_ will. But this supreme and irresistible power to make or to unmake resides only in the _whole_ body of the people, not in any subdivisions of them. (Marshall, in Supreme Court, Cohens v. Virginia, 6 _Wheat._ 264.) The Constitution was ordained and established _by the people_ of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual states. Each state established a constitution for itself, and in that constitution provided such limitations and restrictions on the powers of its particular government as its judgment dictated. _The people of the United States_ framed _such_ a government for the United States as _they_ supposed best adapted to _their_ situation, and best calculated to promote _their_ interests. The powers _they_ conferred on this government were to be exercised by itself; and the limitations on power, if expressed in general terms, are naturally, and, we think, necessarily, applicable to the government created by the instrument. They are limitations of power granted in the instrument itself; not of distinct governments, framed by _different persons_ and for different purposes. (Marshall, in Supreme Court, Barron v. Mayor of Baltimore, 7 _Peters_, 243.)