The Constitution was never submitted to the people of the United States in the aggregate, or as a people. No such political community as the people of the United States exists or ever did exist. There has never been any such thing as a vote of ‘the people of the United States in the aggregate’; no such people is recognized by the Constitution; no such political community has ever existed. […] The monstrous fiction that they acted as one people ‘in their aggregate capacity’ has not an atom of fact to serve as a basis.
Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Volume 1, chapters 2, 3, and 4.
The Constitution was submitted to the States for their approval and ratification, and not to the people of the whole country, in the aggregate, and it was agreed to and ratified by the States as States, and not by the people of all the States in one aggregate mass.
Alexander Stephens, The War Between the States, Volume 1, col. 4.
That the ratification of the Constitution will be a federal and not a national act is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union nor from that of a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States that are parties to it.
James Madison, The Federalist, xxxix.