"Sovereignty resides only in the people of each separate State (that is, in the government-making power), and can only be exercised by the organic convention of each State. Governments are merely the creatures and agents of these sovereignties, deriving their only powers from them, and are only authorized to exercise, for their creators some certain specified and delegated powers of sovereigiity such as the declaration and conduct of war and of commerce. Government possesses of itself no inherent sovereignty, and the proposition that sovereignty can exist in an agency is an utter absurdity."
"Allegiance is properly defined to be the duty of a subject to a sovereign; and, as sovereignty resides only in the people of each separate State, and is only embodied in their primordial, organic, government-making conventions, it is only there that allegiance is due."
"Citizens owe obedience to their government, and to all constitutional laws; but allegiance is only due to sovereignty."
The Government (or agency) at Washington, or any other constitutional government, [cannot] be regarded, in any sense, as sovereign.
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David Upton