This latter is really the doctrine of some of the slave states--the "state-rights" doctrine, so called. That doctrine holds that the general government is merely a confederacy or league of the several states, _as states_; not a government established by the people, _as people_. This "state-rights" doctrine has been declared unconstitutional by reiterated opinions of the supreme court of the United States;[22] and, what is of more consequence, it is denied also by the preamble to the constitution itself, which declares that it is "the people," (and not the state governments,) that ordain and establish it. It is true also that the constitution was ratified by conventions of the people, and not by the legislatures of the states. Yet because the constitution was ratified by conventions of the states _separately_, (as it naturally would be for convenience, and as it necessarily must have been for the reason that none but the people of the respective states could recall any portion of the authority they had, delegated to their state governments, so as to grant it to the United States government,)--yet because it was thus ratified, I say, some of the slave states have claimed that the general government was a league of states, instead of a government formed by "the people." The true reason why the slave states have held this theory, probably is, because it would give, or appear to give, to the states the right of determining who should, and who should not, be citizens of the United States. They probably saw that if it were admitted that the constitution of the United States had designated its own citizens, it had undeniably designated the whole people of the then United States as such; and that, as a state could not enslave a citizen of the United States, (on account of the supremacy of the constitution of the United States,) it would follow that there could be no constitutional slavery in the United States. Again. If the constitution was established by authority of all "the people of the United States," they were all legally parties to it, and citizens under it. And if they were parties to it, and citizens under it, it follows that neither they, _nor their posterity_, nor any nor either of them, can ever be legally enslaved within the territory of the United States; for the constitution declares its object to be, among other things, "to secure the blessings of liberty to _ourselves, and our posterity_." This purpose of the national constitution is a law paramount to all state constitutions; for it is declared that "this constitution, and the laws of the United States that shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges _in every state_ shall be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding."