World Unity 2

The continent of North America had no nation anywhere when the first European colonists arrived in the sixteenth century. This made subjection of the natives and colonization easy. The Spanish conquerors of Mexico met an empire with a central government in Mexico City but some conquered tribes eagerly aided the Spaniards crush the empire. States developed in North America as they had in Africa during the nineteenth century. European nations conquered the natives and outlined on maps the boundaries of their colonies. The colonies then became states when the Europeans departed. The states in Africa are now nations enclosed within frontiers established by Europeans. In North America, the Europeans left behind colonies that became at their departure provinces or states but not nations. British rule continued in Canada and united its peoples but Canadians did not begin thinking of their country as a nation until late in the twentieth century. The thirteen American colonies declared themselves sovereign states in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 which reads “that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.” Several factors unified the thirteen states, the common use of English, their common location along the Atlantic Ocean, the common slavery of black Africans and indentured whites, the military threat in their western areas from Indians, and their eight-year war with Britain. When freed from Britain, the thirteen new American states were already unified well enough to fix their union by law by the ratification of the Constitution. But it is implicit in the Constitution that every state is sovereign and that the sovereign powers granted the new government in Washington derived from the sovereign powers of the states. Put simply, the conundrum was that the Federal Government could not have obtained limited sovereign powers unless they had been obtained from some prior absolute sovereignty belonging to the states which the Constitution also limited. The Constitution never uses the word “national” or “nation” or “Federal Government” anywhere. It says its purpose is to form “a more perfect union…for the united states of America” and it then enumerates powers that the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the new government possess. Clearly the Constitution is about delegating certain powers to a central government and this would certainly have been an odd way to set up a “national” government since the powers delegated are limited. However over time as the union expanded and faced wars and the challenge of keeping the union strong, many historians found it convenient to find evidence for America being a nation going back all the way to the landing of English colonists at Plymouth in Massachusetts in 1620. Their point of view is false. The only true line to follow to understand American history is the unity that evolved among colonists and immigrants that produced over time a glorious union of states, a union which was not a nation and never became a nation.
Daniel McNeill                                                  
The United States of the World, The Theater of the Impossible, The End of All Beginnings, books by Daniel McNeill, are for sale at:
amazon.com/author/graceisall