The People of the United States
group · 2 works · 4 mentions · 11 anchored passages
the people of the United States · the people · We, the people · we, the people of the United States
in the texts
Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated
The collective political actor named in the constitution's opening phrase, whose true referent — the people of each state acting politically, versus a single consolidated national people — is the central question the passage resolves.
But if the phrase “we the people of the United States” refers to the people of each state, the argument is superfluous, and the decision of the constitution itself, decisive.
No people or community has ever been composed in the United States, except by the inhabitants of each state, associating distinctly from every other state, by their own separate consent.
They were not powers possessed by a consolidated people of all the states, but by a distinct people of each state;
The Unconstitutionality of Slavery
The collective body of inhabitants of the United States who, per the author's argument, are made citizens by the constitution's preamble.
If it be admitted that the constitution designated its own citizens, then there is no escape from the conclusion that it designated the whole people of the United States as such.
And, first, the constitution made all “the people of the United States” citizens under the government to be established by it;
The preamble to the constitution has told us in the plainest possible terms, to wit, that “We, the people of the United States,” “do ordain and establish this constitution,” &c.