New States, indeed, have been organized and been admitted into the Union without an enabling act of Congress; but the case of Kansas, if nothing else, proves that the proceeding is irregular, illicit, invalid, and dangerous. Congress, of course, can condone the wrong and validate the act, but it were better that the act should be validly done, and that there should be no wrong to condone. Territories have organized as States, adopted State constitutions, and instituted State governments under what has been called "squatter sovereignty;" but such sovereignty has no existence, because sovereignty is attached to the domain; and the domain is in the United States. It is the offspring of that false view of popular sovereignty which places it in the people personally or generically, irrespective of the domain, which makes sovereignty a purely personal right, not a right fixed to the soil, and is simply a return to the barbaric constitution of power. In all civilized nations, sovereignty is inseparable from the state, and the state is inseparable from the domain. The will of the people, unless they are a state, is no law, has no force, binds nobody, and justifies no act.
The regular process of forming and admitting new States explains admirably the mutual relation of the Union and the several States. The people of a Territory belonging to the United States or included in the public domain not yet erected into a State and admitted into the Union, are subjects of the United States, without any political rights whatever, and, though a part of the population, are no part of the sovereign people of the United States. They become a part of that people, with political rights and franchises, only when they are erected into a State, and admitted into the Union as one of the United States. They may meet in convention, draw up and adopt a constitution declaring or assuming them to be a State, elect State officers, senators, and representatives in the State legislature, and representatives and senators in Congress, but they are not yet a State, and are, as before, under the Territorial government established by the General Government. It does not exist as a State till recognized by Congress and admitted into the Union. The existence of the State, and the rights and powers of the people within the State, depend on their being a State in the Union, or a State united. Hence a State erected on the national domain, but itself outside of the Union, is not an independent foreign State, but simply no State at all, in any sense of the term. As there is no union outside of the States, so is there no State outside of the Union; and to be a citizen either of a State or of the United States, it is necessary to be a citizen of a State, and of a State in the Union. The inhabitants of Territories not yet erected into States are subjects, not citizens--that is, not citizens with political rights. The sovereign people are not the people outside of State organization, nor the people of the States severally, but the distinct people of the several States united, and therefore most appropriately called the people of the United States.