"It is true that there was a small minority of the members of the convention that framed the constitution who, in the language of Luther Martins report of the Secret Debates, wished to abolish and annihilate all State Governments, and to bring forward one general Government of a monarchical nature. Mr. Martins report proceeds to say, that these enemies of State governments and friends of monarchy, knowing that they were too weak in numbers openly to bring forward their system, and conscious also that the people of America would reject it if proposed, & c., as every one knows they would have done. Had the new constitution impaired, or in the least degree endangered the sovereignty of the States, it never would have been ratified by a single State.

This last constitution was, in one respect, a clear violation of the most solemn agreement entered into by all the States in the articles of the second confederation, in 1777. The last article of that compact is as follows: Art. 13. * * * The articles of this confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual: nor shall any alteration be made in any of them, unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and afterwards CONFIRMED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF EVERY STATE.

Counting the early New England confederacy, there have been two colonial Unions, and two independent State Unions, to say nothing of the colonial combinations of 1698 and 1754, and three of these Unions were designed and declared to be perpetual. That of New England, in 1643, was designated in the articles of the Union, a perpetual league. It lasted 30 years. That of 1778, or if we reckon from the time of its adoption by all the States, of 1781, declared that, the union shall be perpetual. It lasted 3 years. But, it is a remarkable fact, that the constitution of the Fourth, or the present Federal Union, formed in 1787, does not claim, in terms, to be perpetual. The preamble simply calls it a more perfect Union. The framers of this Constitution had witnessed the dissolution of two perpetual Unions in less than twelve years, and they were familiar with the dissolution of a third perpetual Union of an earlier datefacts which may have influenced them to leave this word perpetual out of the instrument they were forming."

The Old Guard Volume 3 Issue 3 Mar. 1865, page 101, by Governor Horatio Seymour, of New York- (Correction- this article is not given an author- Seymour did write many of the articles for the Old Guard, it could have been written by its editor C. Chauncey Burr.)