16 was to justify independence. their Toward that decision end, they to declare set forth a theory of legitimate government, then demonstrated how far British rule had strayed from that ideal. The Declaration’s seminal passage opens with perhaps the most important line in the document. “We hold these Truths to be self-evident.” Grounded on that reason, ‘self-evident’ truths invoke the long tradition of natural law, which holds that there is a higher law, of right and wrong from which to derive human law and against which criticize that law at any time. (The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America). Once a very relevant and interesting debate arose as to whether America is a fully sovereign nation, or merely a confederation of sovereign States allied for the purposes of common defense and foreign policy, did not begin with the Civil War, or, for that matter, with the quixotic challenge to American unity mounted by paleo-libertarians and neo- Confederates in more recent years, but goes back to the earliest years under the constitution. As Henry